Putting the monitoring back into "AWRM"?
For this month's post, I'm choosing to focus on the state of New Mexico's " active water resource management" program , which I'm unofficially re-naming the active water resource monitoring program. Why? Read on... I'm just back from the Rio Mimbres, in southwestern New Mexico, a beautiful and verdant valley even in this horrible drought year (the driest on record for most parts of the state, serious business). In past posts, I'd made mention of the Mimbres as both fully adjudicated and already in the AWRM program that the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) runs. About eight years old as a piece of state statute, less old in terms of actual existence, AWRM has triggered controversy, grumbling, and one lawsuit that questioned its legality. On the Mimbres, the trigger was the Bounds case, and it has created real difficulties for folks on the so-called "upper Mimbres" (basically north of Rt 152 that runs E-W across the valley) with folks dow...