When the (Rio) Gallinas come home to roost
On Monday, I was given a substantial tour of the Rio Gallinas upper basin near Las Vegas, and also a courtesy visit to the Gallinas Canyon where several small, mostly depopulated villages are still located (Lourdes among them). William Gonzales, a retired veteran, works closely as a board member of the Rio Gallinas Acequia Association, took time out of his day to show this gabacho around the area. We discussed several items that had been addressed at the court hearings back in early November (see this post). Principal among these were the remand order, between the city of Las Vegas, acequias and the state engineer's office. Like most quasi-urban areas of the Southwest, the town-cum-city of Las Vegas has struggled to maintain an agricultural greenbelt around its setting. That the Rio Gallinas cuts through town not only determines many of the acequia flow patterns east and west, but also is reflected in the local politics of the town. To hear the RGAA discussing upcoming elections, with the west side and east side of Las Vegas, sounded a bit like Westside Story.
Two important, but rather neglected, aspects of acequias were highlighted on Monday. First, and foremost, it is increasingly difficult to manage surface waters when parties keep changing affiliations and allegiances. Here, and only as one example, the story of the Gallinas Canal Company is instructive. They have re-formed themselves as an acequia, as opposed to a private irrigation company, but they have not joined the larger RGAA collective effort. Did they do this for strategic reasons? Is it, in fact, better to be an acequia than a private company with shareholders along a ditch? The associated, and complicated, factors that are attached to the Storrie Lake project are even more mind-numbing. At the time of my visit work on the century-old diversion structure, that takes water as the Gallinas comes out of its narrow canyon onto the plains, was being performed with some of the state monies available for metering efforts. The "real" river was being blocked off, and all of the Gallinas flow at the time was being dumped into the Storrie Canal, where it eventually ends in the reservoir. That Storrie project is a federal project but it also has private shareholders and agricultural representatives. Even though they are not the senior water right on the Gallinas, because of sheer numbers and the infrastructure, they are frequently consulted or advised by the local acequias on changes to the Gallinas. 
The second aspect that was visible was...well, vandalism. I'm only going to include one shot of this evidence here in the blog, a bent headgate rod that took some obvious work, but this is another downside of more "urbanized" acequias. It's hard to blame it on anyone specific, but let's say that Las Vegas jovenes need some better hobbies. As we wandered through the Roundhouse Ditch diversion structure area, with its intake and OSE-installed water meter and flume, it was clear that local youngins were making use of the area as a paintball practice zone. Noticeable, too, is how high that sediment is in the river channel, and how low the over-lying bridge is. One good high flow event on the Gallinas and the bridge is history. But more on that later...
We wrapped the field tour with a drive down the Gallinas, moving beyond city limits, into the lower Gallinas canyon area, to go visit Mr. Gonzales' satellite house in Lourdes, a town of 0 that is still planted by locals who make the drive between fields and Las Vegas. That these towns, Lourdes, Chaperito, Concepcion, all lie now largley unpopulated is no surprise. There's no paved road, no electricity, although phone lines now reach to these places. Who will live without these modern conveniences? Still, you cannot deny the attraction of these towns with their old standing (or ruined) schoolhouses, adobe churches, and heirloom apple and pear orchards stretching out on the irrigated floodplain. The parallel to suitcase farming on the Great Plains, or private ranches in Mexico, was striking: satellite communities that serve agrarian needs with permanent houses in town. This is striking country; one that I'd never seen before and would encourage others to explore. It's also hard not to be impressed by a landscape that looks like Comanche country.
With some spare time on my hands in the afternoon, after a burger, I drove up the Rio Gallinas canyon on a day where snow still covered the shaded north slopes, to get a sense of the watershed. Draped in pines, nearly alone on a quiet road, and too narrow for much agriculture, it's a small catchment for what is a highly disputed water resource in town. And it drove home the principal problem the city of Las Vegas has, a lack fo water storage. With only 1000afy of storage on an annual basis, the city easily uses two to three times that amount. Demography has lapped water infrastructure in this small city, and there are no easy solutions that wouldn't spark a revolution among irrigators or conservationists. If Floyd Dominy was still alive, he might propose a quick concrete dam right where the Gallinas meets the plains, but that era of large dams seems to have passed now.This area has its hands full, but it seems like the on-going negotiations between acequias, the city, and the state may lead to a long-term solution after the collapse of the Pueblo Water Rights Doctrine. More on the Gallinas later, as I follow this process of active water metering, for now... I must read up and prepare for events at the Congreso de las Acequias coming this weekend.
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