Commission tables more funding for Gila project
Official: Additional money ‘not critical’ for environmental study
The New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission tabled additional spending for the Bureau of Reclamation on the Gila River Diversion Project at its meeting Thursday.
Total funding that the Bureau of Reclamation requested for fiscal years 2020 and 2021 from the ISC for the Gila River project is $1.8 million. The ISC already approved $948,000 of that budget last year. The additional $687,000 would be used for an ethnographic cultural survey, and an additional $174,000 would be used in fiscal year 2021 to close out operations on the environmental impact statement.
“This funding is not on the critical path for completing the environmental impact statement,” said State Engineer John D’Antonio Jr., who also serves as ISC secretary.
A draft EIS was emailed internally
Wednesday to the ISC and is expected to be released to the public in September.
Pete Domenici Jr., longtime lawyer for the New Mexico Central Arizona Project Entity, said the CAP knows it will not make the year-end deadline for the impact statements. But he said CAP officials have had “positive meetings” preparing to ask the secretary of the interior to extend the National Environmental Policy Act Record of Decision deadline until next June.
That extension is not yet official, according to ISC attorney Dominique Work. If the interior secretary does not approve the extension, the state may not receive the full $56.3 million in construction funding available from the Arizona Water Settlements Act.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t keep going on this project,” Work said.
The settlements act of 2004 allowed New Mexico to divert 14,000 acre-feet of water from the Gila River in exchange for delivering an equivalent amount of water downstream. The legislation also gave the state access to $66 million in funds — $90 million in today’s dollars — for water projects, and 10 years to decide how to use it. In 2014, New Mexico chose to pursue the Gila River diversion. The CAP was created in 2015 to oversee projects using AWSA money in the New Mexico Unit Fund.
Norman Gaume was the only person to offer public comment opposing additional funding for the Gila diversion. Gaume is the former director of ISC and the former water resources manager for Albuquerque.
“They have already spent $15 million, and they don’t have a feasibility study,” Gaume told the Journal after Thursday’s meeting in Albuquerque. “I knew from the beginning that this project wasn’t feasible. The benefits for the (Gila) diversion are marginal for only some irrigators.”
Howard Hutchinson, the CAP entity representative for the San Francisco Soil and Water Conservation District in Glenwood, said he hoped the commission would continue to support the Gila EIS process.
“We hope this effort will bear fruit at some point,” Hutchinson said. “The 14,000 acre-feet is the only new water coming to the state of New Mexico. The value of that water is incredible.”