Last summer, the Middle Rio Grande through Albuquerque dried for about 50 days. This year, the river will dry again — as early as May.
Irrigation season will be short, fire danger will be high and Albuquerque’s largest drinking water utility will again switch from diverting river water to relying exclusively on groundwater.
Long-term data reveals clear warming and drying trends, said Jason Casuga, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s chief engineer and CEO. And New Mexicans experience those changes in their daily lives.
In mid-March, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District started “charging” the system. Irrigators should schedule water deliveries in the coming weeks. (Laura Paskus for Source NM) “People see a river drying that they didn’t used to see dry, see mountains that are through their snowpack earlier than they’ve ever seen,” Casuga said. “Maybe some folks can debate why that’s happening, but the reality is there is less water here now.”
With an early heat wave gripping the watershed, the Middle Rio Grande might swell in the short-term, but by the end of April or early May, Casuga said, things will “look very bleak.”
Systems are breaking down right now because the hydrology of the river is “just that bad.” That calls for hard conversations, he said, about farming practices, managing invasive plant species in the bosque, complying with the Rio Grande Compact, and much more.
“Nobody has to agree, but we have to be willing to have the conversations and then push our leaders to make good decisions,” he said. “We can’t just go to sleep and hope it gets better tomorrow. We have to change, and that change needs to be flexible.”
Water security at 'grave risk'
For more than two decades, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Albuquerque Area Office leased and released water from upstream reservoirs for endangered species and to keep water flowing through Albuquerque. Supplementing the river that way “kind of masked the effects of drought, of a warmer climate,” the agency’s Water Operations Supervisor Carolyn Donnelly told Source NM.
“For many years, we’d have a bad snow year but (people) still saw in Albuquerque, the river flow. So, they could think, ‘It’s not that bad,’” said Donnelly. “But really, it was that bad.”
Now, there’s no water to spare in the watershed’s reservoirs. On the Chama River, a tributary of the Rio Grande, Abiquiu Reservoir is 61% full; El Vado, 13% full; and Heron, 7% full. That’s the lowest Heron Reservoir has been since it was filled in 1971.
The Rio Grande Basin is coming off its warmest winter on record, with the mountains suffering a major snow drought. But overconsumption was already putting water security on the Rio Grande at “grave risk,” according to a study released late last year. That study of the watershed in the U.S. and Mexico revealed that 85% of the water used in New Mexico from the Rio Grande is “fundamentally unsustainable.”
Former New Mexico Interstate Stream Director Norm Gaume believes New Mexico’s overuse of water in the Middle Rio Grande “compromises the water security of the entire state.” And he thinks New Mexico is headed into another “compact battle,” like the 12-year-long U.S. Supreme Court battle on the Lower Rio Grande.
Under this year’s “dire” conditions, the state will have an even harder time complying with the Rio Grande Compact, said Gaume, president of New Mexico Water Advocates.
Already, the state is under-delivering to water users in southern New Mexico and Texas, creating additional legal restrictions for water managers. New Mexico’s current debit to Texas exceeds 132,000-acre feet of water, and it’s expected to keep growing.
And while the state might experience a healthy monsoon or robust snowpack from year to year, the long-term trend toward less water in the region’s streams, rivers and reservoirs is clear. “This is not a drought, this is aridification,” said Gaume. “Droughts are climatic, but they’re expected to end. This is not expected to end, and it’s wishful thinking to imagine it will.”
The public needs political leaders to tackle the Middle Rio Grande’s problems as an “existential threat,” he said. “As a water resources engineer, I have that training, but I also have this deep respect and love for rivers,” he said. “Water is a life force. It doesn’t just come out of a tap. It exists naturally, and we are totally failing in our stewardship responsibilities — not only to our detriment and the detriment of the natural world, but to the detriment of our progeny.”
Climate change dealing a 'bum hand'
The Middle Rio Grande includes two “types” of water in the system: water native to the Rio Grande watershed and its tributaries; and San Juan-Chama water, contributions from the Colorado River system diverted into the Rio Grande via Heron Reservoir and the Chama River.
After the San Juan-Chama Drinking Water Plant came online in 2009, and the Albuquerque Bernalillo Water Utility Authority could draw that water directly from the river, the aquifer in Albuquerque “rebounded really well,” according to Mark Kelly, the utility’s water resources division manager. In certain parts of the city, groundwater levels rose by about 40 feet.
Since the utility has regularly shifted back to groundwater pumping in the summer, that upward trajectory has “flattened off.”
Climate change is “dealing us a bum hand” in terms of snowpack that makes it through the series of tunnels, diversions and siphons that moves water from the Colorado River system into the Rio Grande’s San Juan-Chama Project, said Kelly.
Already, the utility’s 100-year water resources management strategy accounts for a hotter, drier future. But the plan is being updated, Kelly said, “to make sure that some of the assumptions we’ve made in terms of climate change and demands are still aligned with our total water portfolio.”
In the meantime, the Middle Rio Grande will keep drying, often for longer expanses and durations. Fish, wildlife, and habitats will suffer. The bosque’s trees will die, dry and burn. And year after year, people will become more accustomed to seeing the dry riverbed.
“It’s a classic tragedy of the commons, where we are all guilty because nobody has taken leadership,” said Gaume. “As a society, we should know better — and we do know better — but we haven’t acted yet.”
