Don’t wait to put your water rights to beneficial use

Thank you for publishing the article, “State: Chevron water rights do not exist,” in the March 9, 2022 issue of the Taos News. The state engineer’s office ruled that Chevron’s 1,433 acrefeet of water rights do not exist because Chevron had failed to put these water rights to beneficial use. These water rights are worth more than $22,000,000.

According to the article, Chevron intends to appeal the state engineer’s decision. The Chevron water rights are originally from thousands of acres located from Questa to Costilla that had been previously farmed and irrigated. These water rights were severed from this land. The land was dried up, never to be farmed again. The water rights can’t even be returned to the lands from where they originated because the state engineer’s office has ruled that they no longer exist. Chevron, being a multibillion-dollar corporation, can afford to appeal this decision all the way to the State Supreme Court.

Currently, there are thousands of acres in Taos County and Northern New Mexico that are not being farmed or irrigated that have water rights attached to them. These acres are owned by many individual landowners. These acres, at one time, sustained the lives of the people from Northern New Mexico. The same ruling that was reached by the state engineer’s office regarding the Chevron water rights can be made by the state engineer office regarding the water rights attached to this un-farmed land, because the water rights have not been put to beneficial use. However, the individual landowners may not be able to pay the legal cost associated with appealing the state engineer’s decision.

But what is causing the state engineer’s office to use the state law that allows him to declare that certain water rights “no longer exist”? There is only a finite amount of water in New Mexico, and the demand for that water continues to grow. Examples of those demands are the water needs of cities like Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Individual houses and subdivisions that occur in Taos County also demand water and are assigned water rights by the state engineers office as allowed by law.

My advice to Taoseños and people from Northern New Mexico is keep the water on your land. Put your water rights to beneficial use by planting on your land and irrigating it. The day is coming when the state engineer’s office will be notifying each of us that our water rights no longer exist because they were not put to beneficial use. There are extreme and growing pressures from growing population centers and developers that will force that office to declare that your water rights no “longer exist.”