Unsettled Waters: A blog on water rights in the American West

First of all, apologies for the long interval and delay in this latest post. I had hoped to keep posting at a pace of about one comment per month, and administrative duties have taken their toll on this blog. But there's big news out from this past week, for all New Mexicans, even if the Aamodt-Abeyta settlements (for the Pojoaque Valley and Taos Valley, respectively) are supposed to be constrained to those water basins. The effects simply won't be. Funding for the settlement was approved on November 30th by the U.S. House of Representatives after already clearing the Senate, and it has money attached. The timing is tight, and frankly, lucky for those people who would fashion themselves as 'proponents' of the settlement. The legal team at the Office of the State Engineer must be relieved, if not overjoyed, that these old adjudications are seemingly put to rest. It puts to rest two of the longest running court processes in United States history, and will re-configure t...

Hello again - as I begin the submersion into a week 2 field excursion with my "political ecology of the Southwest" course here at Colorado College, I wanted to share a few thoughts about this particular course. We adopted a theme of "nuclear borderlands," an obvious play on Joseph Masco's (2006) excellent book by the same title, and one of our focus points is the relationship between the nuclear era and water quality in northern New Mexico . And it's difficult to talk about this region without discussing the role of "the lab" in every day life. I'm referring to Los Alamos National Laboratories here, and the small (federal company) town of Los Alamos, perched on the Pajarito Plateau. We are beginning our week with a guided tour of the political ecology of northern New Mexico, hitting on the major historical-geographic discussion points that have to be understood in context, highlighting the cultural diversity of the region. Among the topics we...

So, we are finally back from the Pyrenees . As part of our time in southern France/northern Spain, I poked around villages and countryside to see how irrigation infrastructure and social institutions are surviving. The news is mixed, even for a region that has decent water supplies, and there's real differentiation between FR and ESP in this case. On the French side, the infrastructure of canals looks OK, but the social institutions are facing new pressures as new immigrants to the region show up, without much understanding of the norms for access to water rights (sound familiar?). On the Spanish side, it's infrastructure that needs help, while the social side seems to be in better shape by way of basic functioning and understanding of rules and customs. The other interesting aspect is the accepted mix of function (canal) with recreation (hiking trail) that epitomizes the region. The banks of irrigation canals frequently serve the purpose of trail, as on the GR10 trail that...

I'm not a huge Brooks fan, but this quote (and his column today) are quite appropriate both for the Gulf oil fiasco and for water governance in general (and certainly for local acequia vs centralized water management issues!): "The balance between federal oversight and local control is off-kilter. We have vested too much authority in national officials who are really smart, but who are really distant. We should be leaving more power with local officials, who may not be as expert, but who have the advantage of being there on the ground." And frankly, the same applies to "state experts" as well - even when earnest, there's only so much (or so little) folks in Santa Fe can actually do when it comes to water resource management (or lack thereof). Read the whole column by Brooks, focused on the bungled fed-BP clean-up coordination efforts, here .

So with a full week now under my belt, after returning from Japan, I'm ready to start tackling some comparative posts. This one is an abstract for what I perceived in general about the way the Japanese have coped with, and modified, natural rivers and streams. First, the places we visited were highly modified urban environments (mostly), and that should be the most important caveat. However, I do want to highlight the amazing and sometimes over-the-top use of concrete in Japan. From urban watersheds (like the Kamo River in Kyoto) to more rural ones on the south island of Kyushu, concrete river-banks and riparian armoring are common. Second, this generalization also counts for coastal locations, where concrete tetrapods litter much of the Japanese coastline. Finally, one of the highlights for a water geek was to see the aqueduct section of the large Lake Biwa-Kyoto Canal , that starts at (you guessed it) Lake Biwa northeast of the city, and moves water through tunnels, an a...

Hello again friends. As I recover from a where-the-hell-am-I jetlag from the long trip home from Japan, which was 15 hours ahead of Colorado time, I share this link as a BUMP for this weekend's "celebrando las acequias" event in Embudo, New Mexico. Colleague and debonaire activist Estevan Arellano has organized this event, with some great speakers, and is being sponsored by the HUD-funded collaborators from Woodbury University (CA). Wish I could be there to celebrate with you all, compadres y comadres. It looks to be a great time. Saludos, abrazos!

Just a quick announcement of a "blog break" because of upcoming travel to Japan. It's an academic trip focused on "Nature & Environment in Japan" so I'll likely have some good comparative (water) materials to share when I return to writing. It's a whirlwind trip, too, starting from Tokyo, to Kyoto, to Hiroshima, and we end up in Minamata (as in Minamata Bay, yes), before returning to Tokyo for two final days. I hope to check out the irrigation systems and get some cursory understanding in person about their management institutions. More later, and thanks for your understanding.   Soredawa, mata!

OK folks - for anyone even stumbling on to this blog, I need your opinion on an appropriate book title should this set of interests on adjudication, acequias, water governance be turned into a larger volume. So the titles to the right are the "main" portion of the title, probably followed by some combination of water, democracy, governance, adjudication, etc... but in New Mexico. What do you think?

This post takes its inspiration from my good colleague and fellow geographer Tim Forsyth. His book, Critical Political Ecologies (2003, Routledge) is an under-utilized resource in most natural and social science disciplines, probably because it attempts to address and bridge both big groups. But a number of recent stories, in the press and across the blogosphere, have prompted me to use his 2003 concept of "environmental orthodoxy," to address stories about water. Basically, the concept is simple: an environmental orthodoxy (EO) represents the 'dominant conventional wisdom' on a process we think we understand. So, as one example, how about the term " desertification ." Does this mean the spread of sand dunes, or generally the decline of vegetative life-forms from larger tree-like species to scrubbier shrubs? It depends on the user and the point of the author or document, but its range of use is, let's just say, generously wide and flexible. So here go...

Feliz dia de San Isidro! Get ready for a lot of links and tenuous ties -- A series of stories and posts for those of you tracking the future of water use, consumption, and pricing schemes. Many of my fellow aquabloggers make a big deal about whether water is either a commodity or a human right; depending on how "Chicago-school" you are, your own reaction probably varies from "of course you pay for it" to "of course everyone should have access to water as a right." I won't critique positions (yet) but will offer this set of narratives and resources. Try this paper ( link ) for a perspective on this right to water language; alternatively you can find a number of posts on this issue from the Hayekian perspective at Aguanomics , a recent post is  here . The problem with this kind of rhetoric (price it or "make it a right") is that it stays at the binary level (yes/no, black/white, right/commodity). Are there really only two choices to make here?...

Please see Aquadoc's recent post about groundwater law, marketing, and water use and the problems of jurisprudence when dealing with water below the surface. Is this our equivalent of a hydrologic derivative? Read on...

This is a quick post to acknowledge Michael Cox's (2010) recent dissertation , completed at Indiana University, in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), on the Taos Valley acequias as an integrated social and ecological institution and system. Although largely positive on certain qualities or characteristics of many acequias, Cox sounds a warning note about economic factors that may lead to water leaving the acequia and it's worth the read. So even if acequias are able to weather one side of constant change (climate - global change), it's the economics and political economics that may ultimately create problems for them. It shows how the " double exposures " (Leichenko and O'Brien 2008) of global change and globalization may not work in balance when pressuring local resource management systems. This goes straight to the entire 3mb+ dissertation (.pdf) document if you want full details on this work. Congratulations Michael!

I've been remiss. A few developments have occurred in New Mexico, mostly the passing of the Lower Rio Grande adjudication court deadline for the state (NM) to offer the feds (Reclamation) a quantified water right, and that date passed (April 8th). That quantified number will occur whether or not the Reclamation folks actually had or acquired (legally) such water rights at the time that Elephant Butte Dam was constructed. As always, the good folks at Jicarita have been watching this closely. And see Sig Silber's story about the LRG and the ongoing dispute about whether EBID was founded as part of an illegal 'taking' of a private dam and canal company. Hot stuff - and there's an update, too, on LRG proceedings here . Good news for irrigators in most of New Mexico is that the winter snowpack has piled up, thanks to ENSO, and unless all that snow melts in June, farmers and ranchers should have a decent 2010 growing season. Most of the canals are cleaned around the...

Please see Aquadoc's site for the context, but here's the quick link to a paper by Pease (2010) on the difficulties of managing (and transferring) water in an unadjudicated basin in New Mexico. Yes, it's the Middle Rio Grande. There are lessons here for all Westerners, particularly if you live in an unadjudicated basin. h/t to MC . Addendum : The entire issue of the JCWRE is available on-line here . The article by Pease is only one of several on water re-allocation issues in the Western U.S.

A few weeks ago, I attended the ASEH (American Society for Environmental History) meetings in Portland, Oregon . As usual, it was a great set of sessions and associated, er... field activities. An intellectual highlight was getting to meet the author of " In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers ," Mark Carey , an historian who teaches at Washington & Lee (VA). Why would New Mexicans want to read about Andean society and climate change? Isn't this just about Peru? Obviously, New Mexico doesn't have any "glaciers" to worry about anymore, but the implications of the book for NM are numerous and revolve around the issue of snow-pack and future climate scenarios. The table of contents (below) from Carey ( 2010, Oxford U Press ) should also help people decide whether they need to buy it right now, or just look in their libraries for it. "Introduction 1. Melted Ice Destroys a City: Huaraz, 1941 2. Geo-Racial Disorder beneath Enchanted Lakes 3. Engineering the...

Quickpost: I know what I promised, and that I'm breaking it. More on Andean glaciers, melt-water, in the next post (honest). Here, I'm just going to point out Aquadoc's latest post on exempt wells in the West, and his useful (.pdf) document written by Bracken on this really good overview of Western States and their differential policies on exempt wells. Treatment on New Mexico starts on p 171(-175) if you want a short-cut on reading. Fascinating reading, and a good follow-up to the original post from February on the problem of domestic wells.

A colleague of mine in geography at Syracuse University, Farhana Sultana , has organized a mini-conference on the Right to Water . It runs all day today and tomorrow (March 29th and 30th). The schedule is packed with interesting sessions, speakers, and time for feedback and dialogue; too many conferences, so little time (and money) on sabbatical (?). But it's encouraging to see more geographers entering, or committed to, the fray on water issues. Indirectly, Aquadoc highlighted another geo-moment from the National Academy of Sciences on the future of the geographic sciences -- typically laden and leaden with technohype and praise for GIS. I understand this, even if my head aches with the internal mantra of "the solutions are not technical." And I say this as someone who teaches from this perspective of environmental geography and GIS (it's what I teach!), so I feel free to critique my own tribe. Another fellow hydroblogger, David Zetland , has been sounding off on t...

Quickpost : There's another competitor emerging to the recent plans by Mr. Million (the name is not a joke, but how suitable); a new group is proposing an alternate pipeline transfer plan between the Colorado River basin and Front Range cities. [This story courtesy of John Fleck's connections.] Colorado has already perfected water the--, er, inter-basin water transfers, as seen in the map. How much longer before we're all living in some simulacrum of nature? Is there such thing as a natural river anymore? Most of my attention this past year has been focused on individuals with water rights, or the community's access and rights to water (acequias), in New Mexico. But this is what happens when states and large metropolitan areas increasingly assert their own allocations and "paper rights" to "wet water." It's also how paper rights translate to power in a basin. And this kind of pipe-rattling does little to benefit interstate diplomacy for rive...

A recent post on the TVAA pages caught my eye, written by a real estate agent based in Espanola. It reads nicely, and it's meant for a wider audience looking to buy property. This is not an anti-property, anti-real estate screed, it's merely a reminder. One of the easiest ways to protect acequias as a ditch, institution, and their important easements is to spread the word about them prior to new property ownership. While I can appreciate this column for what it is, a kind of public-service announcement meets real estate moxy, how many people will stumble on this? Will the dude from Minnesota find this post or clipping from the paper? Wouldn't acequias in the region be better served if property title codes or statutes were changed to protect the ditch and institution? This way local knowledge could be incorporated into title deeds. Or at least it lays the groundwork for better neighborly interactions if a purchaser has a heads-up. I've mentioned this in passing to se...

I have just returned from a fairly full week in Portland, Oregon, a veritable land of water compared to New Mexico and most of the Southwest of course. The trip was for the American Society for Environmental History meetings, and I was fairly disciplined about going to sessions for the first couple of days. The highlight, in educational terms, was the river-boat tour of the Willamette River on Wednesday, prior to the conference start. For many who don't know the region or the Pacific Northwest well, and here I include myself, what was remarkable was the concentration and rich multi-layered effects of heavy industry on the river. Here, in Ecotopia as Joel Garreau once called the Northwest ( Nine Nations of North America ), it was pretty unexpected to see and hear about the heavy human use and footprint. Industry still crowds the river bank of the Willamette that is pretty startling; even new development in the city requires only a 25 foot setback from the river (which is nothing...

Today's post by John Fleck is worth reading - an update, or re-cap, on a plan to move water from the Fort Sumner area of northeastern New Mexico and pump it to Santa Fe. There's already a local version of this near Santa Fe, which I posted about long ago . Fascinating - let's call this the "big water" news of the year for the capital, or at least potential news. Folks along the lower Pecos River are not crazy about the idea , as is understandable. Colorado has already re-engineered its "natural" hydrology so much, it's tough to actually way what mountain trickle becomes the Arkansas or Colorado Rivers anymore. The other update has to do with another transfer up in the Taos area, which you can read about in the Taos Daily News (probably in a couple of weeks) once a decision has been made. In the mean-time the commissioners have scheduled a meeting, this one found courtesy of the TVAA , with public notice posted below for those interested and able...

I am about to attend the 2010 meetings of the American Society for Environmental History in Portland, Oregon, this coming week (March 10-14). One notion that has seemed both appealing and perplexing is whether there is an environmental history to adjudication in New Mexico. Is this possible? Can a river basin lawsuit have its own environmental history and unintended consequences? What changes in land cover (vegetation, crops) and land use (residential, agricultural, etc..) are provoked by getting sued over water rights? There are some fantastic water sessions at this year's ASEH whose theme is " currents of change ." And I'll be torn three ways, between Southwest water content, East Asian water themes, and European water governance sessions. One of the real, palpable, observations made in New Mexico on adjudication was how it provoked irrigators to be quite vigilant over their fields. This is old news to irrigators, of course, but nevertheless a good human equivale...

Disclaimer : This is a self-serving post as it discusses the release of my first book . So, finally, Private Revolutions is due out this month. You can find it at the press site itself, of course, but also at Amazon and Barnes & Noble , or Powell's too (usually a little cheaper at the first two). The premise of this book is fairly simple, even if the years of work that went into it were not simple at all: Ranchers are not an amorphous body of rural evil-doers oppressing communal farmers and ranchers in Mexico. Aaron Bobrow-Strain has also made this argument for Chiapas, Mexico, in his own book . In fact, many "private" ranch owners are also still communal farmers and herders, contra the work of so much social science in Mexico (and Latin America in general). I also give some attention to the larger context of ranching, such as gender, economics, and the ecology and management of private ranches in northern Mexico (read: Sonora ). I'm happy it's out, an...

From Colorado Springs, this is a quick-post update on the Lower Rio Grande adjudication issues we've touched on here before - namely, the long-standing dispute over the Elephant Butte Dam (aka the Rio Grande Project). Of all my interviews, and interactions, during the last 7 months spent in New Mexico - this may have been the thorniest and the one topic where an interested party said they were "not able" to talk to me because of this pending litigation. The problem is that, even without a conversation from said source, people continue to write about it , talk about it. Fun stuff. Here's a story from the Rio Grande (NM) chapter of the Sierra Club on the LRG and the tangled mess of private, state, and federal interests involved. The great-grandson of Nathan Boyd, Scott, continues to pursue this in Gerald Valentine's court in southern New Mexico. The next date to watch: April 8, 2010 - the day the state of New Mexico has to make the feds an "offer of judgmen...

I cannot help but point out a story by Emily Green , ("the screw turns", Feb 24), about the administrative reversal in Nevada on the pumping plans, that were struck down a few weeks ago by the Nevada Supreme Court. ChanceofRain also provides more background here , on that original decision by the courts. Update : the Governor (NV) has promised not to protect the SNWA.* This simply underlines what I've been thinking for months - the "state" as some conceptual and abstract boogeyman does not exist, it is riddled with contradictions, and in this case it is the separation of powers (executive-judiciary) that are stake. The state does not "see" subjects as a single entity, the state simply uses different hands to make different decisions (sometimes blindly). I'm thinking of Devi , the Hindu Goddess , with multiple arms in this scenario. Maybe that's unfair to her (no blasphemy intended). *And it gets even more confusing when private interests (sure,...

On the 22nd, the Bounds case was heard in the New Mexico Court of Appeals. This case, based out of a dispute in southwestern New Mexico, has a fairy long track record now. You can see one take on this dispute, from 2008, courtesy of Aquadoc. The same source also put together a more recent update , prior to the hearing on the 22nd, with some helpful materials and links also (courtesy MC!). The plaintiffs have allegedly become a real thorn to both state-level agencies and to their neighbors as they try to enforce rigid prior appropriation enforcement, in this case for domestic well impairment effects. But in some ways, it forces the hand for both OSE domestic well directives and New Mexico counties to address the schizophrenic water policies that are everywhere a problem in the west. Frank Titus remarked on this back in 2005 ( partial story link here ). How can the left hand manage water resources, if the right hand is forced to issue permits without regard to third party effects...

This will be only a brief "policy" note on blog interaction - I will no longer be letting " anonymous " folks vote or make comments - too much  spam to deal with (2-3 a day), and I'd rather have real exchanges with people who aren't afraid of being identified. This should not be a big deal, considering I have no real "power" to do anything to anybody in New Mexico. So, that's it - no other news to report, but see last week's updated post on Taos ( Death by a Thousand Straws ) for an update, courtesy of the Taos News , on water transfers and acequias. And please visit Emily Green's brilliant and regular Sunday "best of" water stories, in her " week that was " feature. - updated 3:29pm Sunday (2.21.10)

The latest on-line NYTimes story on the Klamath River settlement caught my eye this morning. This stands in sharp contrast to the other, on-going, soap-opera-like fish vs agriculture story in the American West: the delta smelt saga. John Fleck , Emily Green , and Michael Campana have all posted updates and fired broad-sides at the political tactics in California's smelt case. The esteemed senator from California (DiFi) was drawing analogies for the smelt with New Mexico's silvery minnow , in arguing for some in-flow exceptions (actually, exemptions). Few bought the comparison . Apparently, irrigation districts seem to have a longer (political) life-span than most dams, but that should come as no surprise. As I've said a few times before on these pages, it's not just about money, it's about votes. Dams don't vote - farmers do. And despite the court case name , fish don't sue people. But I do find this Klamath development a bit heartening after hearing of th...

I attended yet another special hearing organized by an acequia commission last night, this time up in the Taos area. For those who saw the last post, this is the Pacheco Community ditch we're talking about, near Ranchos de Taos (south side of town). For residents in and near Taos, it's a familiar story; someone wants to move water away from the ditch for a domestic & sanitation district (essentially a domestic mutual, but bigger, and better funded). In this case, it's the El Valle Water and Sanitation District. Apparently, they have to acquire surface water rights on the order of some 160+af to off-set their groundwater pumping in the area, since the pumps affect all of the tributary drainages in the area. In this particular hearing, a Mr. S------ from Questa, NM was asking for a water rights transfer to take place, so that El Valle could essentially 'retire' the surface right as they offset their pumping. They had not entered into a contract yet, but had at l...

Yet another surface water transfer along an acequia is up for a decision by the ditch's commissioners. This time, it's in the Taos area - the Pacheco ditch. The hearing is set for 5 p.m. at the Juan I. Gonzales Taos County Agricultural Center, 202 Chamisa Road, which lies on the south side of Taos. The notice is posted here , as a .pdf, for the public hearing ( TVAA link). I've written about a few of these applications, notably the Chupadero case and the Cook case (Espanola), and so far it's been a challenge for transfer applicants to get approval by acequia commissioners. These new transfer by-law measures, if they have been adopted by ditch commissioners and parciantes, offer an added measure of protection from water transfers that do not fall under the purview of the OSE. Applicants must plead their case to the commission, and the burden of proof is on them to document that the transfer would not harm the other irrigators on the ditch. Of course, the commissione...

There's an interesting piece in today's Albuquerque Journal, by John Fleck , on the life and (eventual) death of dams - this one happens to be about Elephant Butte in southern New Mexico. The challenge for EB is keeping the Rio Grande channelized enough so that water eventually reaches the actual reservoir, instead of spreading out in a typical distributary delta like so many others that occur around the world, when a river meets ultimate base level (the sea). Here, it's the constant battle between slope, sediment supply, and the currents of the river that dictate where the river struggles to make it to the dead pool of the dam. And unlike the Nile or the Mississippi deltas that are slowly disappearing, this inland Rio Grande near-delta actually re-forms every year. Given the amount of sediment thrown from semi-arid mountain landforms, it's no surprise that flood and sediment control are a major concern. Throw in impervious cover, and you speed up the work that wa...

I have admittedly spent most of my time this past year focused on water quantity , water rights , acequias , and adjudication . And, right or wrong, I have said little about actual water quality . A convergence of interesting quotes, newspapers stories, local activist influences, and a future course plan are making me reconsider how water quality is pertinent not only to this blog but to all New Mexicans. Many of you know of the Buckman Diversion Project just northwest of Santa Fe, essentially a filtering bladder dam that parallels the channel of the Rio Grande, and that will allow up to some 5000 afy to be drawn for the city and county water supply once it comes on-line in 2011. This “new” wet water (love the redundancy of this term) is actually not new, however, in that the Buckman project is supposed to be a renewable water source for a non-renewable one – in essence, to replace the Buckman pumping field currently slurping into the nearby aquifer. I was recently quoted , in som...