Adjudication "stimulus package" and water-sharing in New Mexico

The latest from D.C. is that the House and Senate bills on the Aamodt and Abeyta cases are moving through, and the final federal "stimulus package" amount will be hefty to quell these adjudication legacies in New Mexico. S. Matlock's piece in the New Mexican shows how determined certain parties are about pushing these funding bills through, given their longevity in the state's legal history. What is remarkable is how, especially in the Aamodt case, some of this negotiation went underground from the late 90s to when a settlement draft was proposed in 04. That these concerns about public access to information and what the settlement means (especially to "non-Pueblo" participants) are still problematic is really not all that surprising. One dimension that remains troubling, visible in a recent poll about Aamodt, is that people who claim to know something about the settlement are still unhappy about the terms. And even if the Taos area (Abeyta) settlement is a happier tale of negotiation, both cases ultimately rely on water that is out of basin. In another not-so-subtle game of moving shells, both suits will come to an end with the appearance of SanJuan/Chama and Rio Grande water. For Taos, those are traded waters, for the Pojoaque River Valley (see photo) it means some form of a regional water system network that will allow non-Pueblo residents to hook up or to continue using their wells (especially if they pre-date 1983). So the region can fully anticipate another Buckman-like project that will deliver water north of Santa Fe into the Pojoaque area. How many engineered parasitic pipes can the Rio Grande sustain before this catches up with poor water resource planning?