Where is all the water coming from?
As a native New Mexican, the subject of sufficient water to sustain the needs of the population has been an ongoing topic throughout my many years of growing up and living here. Never before has it been more on the front burner than during these last few years, as science has revealed that our climate is changing rapidly, with Earth warming and future droughts inevitable, especially here in the Southwest with our few water resources.
Every year we wait in anticipation and hope for a healthy snowpack; that, as well as our annual average rain of 12 inches, being two of our primary sources of water. Even the snowpack in southern Colorado matters greatly and is critical in part for meeting our water needs through the San Juan/Chama diversion projects. How the snowpack melts in both states and possibly helps replenish our water table and reservoirs is important. But a warm spring can cause the snowpack to rapidly diminish and quickly run downstream, not filling the surface reservoirs and soaking through the earth to the shrinking groundwater table. And how many people are allowed unlimited tapping into this water table resource?
The banner on the front page of the paper June 13 had wise and sensible advice; be cautious about the use of water, conserve and be aware of waste — wonderful advice.
However, based only on my observations, what seems to be quite a contradiction to this advice is the rampant building of entire developments of single-family homes and apartment buildings complete with swimming pools in and around Santa Fe. New projects are sprouting up as fast as they can be built and sold.
My assumption is that our city and county leaders, planning and zoning as well as the water board are working together on strategic plans and parameters for approving the new building permits. These leaders surely must be composed of people with a background in science and technology who can anticipate future water needs through modeling based on drought history, considering the emerging variable of climate change, and current growth, to ensure sufficient water to sustain the current and future population of our beautiful city.
How does one part of our city leadership advise us to conserve while other part hands out building permits as fast as they can be written, or so it seems? What share of the water resources are allocated to these developments? Is it what the rest of us are conserving?