Struggling to stay afloat as river dries
In exceptionally arid year, N.M. farmers get glimpse of what water managers say could be new normal unless conservation efforts change with climate
Longtime farmer Glen Duggins is pumping more groundwater this summer to irrigate the crops he grows on his small farm along the Rio Grande than he can recall doing in many years.
A severe, prolonged drought is reducing the river’s flows to the lowest levels in decades, affecting cities’ drinking water supplies and compelling farmers to adjust how they water their fields.
Duggins grows chile peppers, alfalfa and corn on his 400-acre farm in Lemitar, a tiny community north of Socorro. He already faces the prospect of restaurants buying fewer goods from him during the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, when their operations have been limited by the state’s public heath orders. Now he’s also seeing higher costs to produce his crops due to pumping.
But he is fortunate, he said, because many farmers in the Middle Rio Grande Valley don’t have water pumps and must shut down when the river gets low.
“Even if you have pumps, the cost of running them is very expensive,” said Duggins, who also is the president of the New Mexico Chile Association. “It’s a Band-Aid. It’s all it’s meant to be. We need the river water.”
So far, he’s shelled out $10,000 for three weeks of pumping and expects he’ll have to pump groundwater for an additional three weeks. This is in addition to the fees he pays to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District for river water.
A thin mountain snowpack, recent heat wave and light monsoon have depleted water levels from the Colorado River Basin to the Chama River to the Rio Grande. It’s perhaps the most arid year in a two-decade dry period in New Mexico, making climate scientists and water managers wonder whether this is the start of an even drier time that will demand a new, longterm approach to urban planning and water use.
Locally, the prolonged drought can be seen in cottonwoods’ foliage turning yellow six weeks early along a parched stretch of the Santa Fe River and the likelihood of the Buckman Direct Diversion — which pulls Rio Grande flows for city of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County water users — suspending operations for the first time in its 10-year history.
Everyone must prepare for how a warmer climate will diminish water supplies and put more stress on humans and the ecosystem, said Dave DuBois, a state climatologist at New Mexico State University.
“We need to address climate change and adapt to it,” DuBois said. “Not just in the here and now, but the next 20, 30 years.”
Drought pinches water supply
New Mexico went through an exceptionally wet period between the 1970s and late 1990s, DuBois said.
Elephant Butte Reservoir, he said, was filled with 2 million acre-feet of water in 1999. An acre-foot is nearly 326,000 gallons.
After that, the state went into a dry period with a few sporadic wet spells, and Elephant Butte’s water level dropped to 200,000 or 300,000 acre-feet most years, and as low as 50,000 by the end of seasonal irrigations, DuBois said.
“I don’t see any indicator of that going up,” he added.
Aside from precipitation plummeting, the state’s average yearly temperatures have increased by several degrees since the 1970s — and show signs of rising more in the future, DuBois said.
A warming climate means more surface water in rivers, lakes and reservoirs will be lost through evaporation, he said, with lighter snowpacks in the mountains to replenish the supply, all while New Mexico’s growth puts more demands on water.
Many state and regional management plans and urban growth plans were based on the wetter period and must be adjusted, not only for a warmer and more arid climate but to accommodate a swelling population and a still robust agricultural industry.
“There’s a lot more users than there used to be,” DuBois said.
As a stopgap measure for this season’s low river flow, Texas, a partner in the decades-old interstate Rio Grande Compact, agreed to release 36,000 acre-feet of water from its reserve supply at El Vado Reservoir in Rio Arriba County for use by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.
The dam at El Vado is one of three in the federal San Juan-Chama Project, a system that diverts water from the San Juan River to the Chama River and then to the Rio Grande for use in households across the state, including in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
The water released from El Vado is mainly intended for irrigation within the conservancy district — which stretches from Cochiti Lake to south of Socorro — and for now is boosting the river’s flows. But without heavier monsoon rains this summer, the Rio Grande is expected to drop below a critical threshold in September, forcing the Buckman Direct Diversion to shut down for six to eight weeks.
Santa Fe officials say area wells will have no problem supplying drinking water for the city while Buckman is idled. Still, they and other authorities have expressed concerns about whether severe dips in river flow will become a seasonal trend.
David Gensler, a hydrologist with the conservancy district, said he’s a climate change doubter but can’t deny this year’s drought is highly unusual and might not bode well.
“This is the worst year I remember here in the valley in the last 25 years in terms of overall water supply,” Gensler said.
Texas was gracious in passing its supply of water for next year to the conservancy district, Gensler said. But the district must repay that water plus additional water it will owe to Texas by that year’s end, totaling 60,000 to 100,000 acre-feet, he added.
Gensler said he’s confident the district will repay what it owes Texas in the spring by operating leaner and storing water more efficiently at El Vado.
More reservoir water could become available to the conservancy district and regional governments in the future. A recently passed U.S. House bill would allow Abiquiú Lake, also in the San JuanChama system, to increase its storage capacity by 30,000 acre-feet.
Proponents say that would allow for greater flexibility for storing and using water, especially during droughts.
Conservation is key
Regardless of whether this drought is short-term or long-term, or even if wet times return, the conservancy district and anyone else managing water must be more efficient, Gensler said.
Everyone wants more water, from farmers to developers to environmentalists seeking to restore wildlife habitat in rivers, he said.
“We are going to have to figure out how to do more with less,” Gensler said.
DuBois said people are doing a decent job reducing their water consumption and now must work to ensure there’s enough water for future generations.
“More conservation on the urban side and smart agriculture on the surface water side,” DuBois said.
In New Mexico, agriculture is the largest consumer of water.
Farmers should consider cultivating crops that require less irrigation, such as guar, a type of bean, and a different type of alfalfa than is common, DuBois said.
However, Gensler thinks the key to conserving water is improving how it’s delivered and used. That would help ensure farmers have adequate water supply even during a shortage, he said. “There’s a lot of waste,” he said.
Earthen canals absorb some of the water and allow much of it to evaporate, he said, adding it would be better to instead funnel the water through culverts and pipes.
Wasting water also can be a matter of bad habits and misinformation, Gensler said.
Some farmers carry on age-old routines passed down from earlier generations, such as watering their fields every Tuesday morning, even if the crops or soil don’t need it, he said. Others slowly irrigate, believing they are conserving water, when in fact they are using five or six times as much as they would with a faster delivery.
“When we talk about climate change, you know, if it’s going to be a 50 percent reduction in water supply, that’s going to be pretty tough,” Gensler said. “But if we’re talking about a 15 [percent] or 25 percent reduction … I think we can wring that much blood out of the turnip.”
Planning for climate change
A warmer climate depleting water supplies in the face of population growth has been on public officials’ minds for years.
In 2015, the Bureau of Reclamation conducted the Santa Fe Basin Study, which looked at how the climate could change, the effects it would have on regional waters, and how governments could prepare and respond.
The bureau collaborated with the city and county of Santa Fe on the report, using computer modeling to generate various climate change scenarios.
For instance, if the mean temperature warmed by 1 degree, how would that affect river flows in the spring and late summer? How much would reservoirs be drained? Would groundwater supply be stressed?
“They run the modeling to see what these future impacts would look like,” said agency spokeswoman Mary Carlson.
The agency will team up again with the city and county to update the computer modeling. The agency will pay half of the $600,000 cost.
The new modeling will be used not only to update the agency’s report but to aid a joint study the city and county are launching, called Santa Fe Water Plan 2100.
The joint study will analyze how to sustain adequate water supply in a changing climate for the next 80 years. It will be revisited every five years to add new data.
“Water managers are confronting the new normal,” said Bill Schneider, the city of Santa Fe’s water resources coordinator.
At the same time, the city is exploring the feasibility of building a $20 million pipeline that would funnel 3,000 acre-feet of e±uent from the Paseo Real Wastewater Treatment Plant on the city’s south side to the Buckman Direct Diversion, increasing its yearly water supply by 60 percent, Schneider said.
Some environmental groups resist the idea because they’d prefer the city to keep releasing the filtered wastewater into the Santa Fe River, Schneider said.
“We’re trying to build a closed loop to reuse and recycle,” Schneider said. “It’s part of hardening your resilience.”
Duggins said he thinks population growth will hurt farmers as much as climate change because water will get diverted from agriculture to supply new homes. That supply problem must get solved if New Mexico’s farming is to survive, he said.
“Too many people are sucking straws out of the same glass,” Duggins said. “The farms keep dwindling. The experts have the data. We feel it.”