Gila diversion project makes no sense
The old saying “don’t throw good money after bad” could have been invented with the Gila River diversion project in mind (“Group pushes for Gila River protections,” May 20).
New Mexico water managers have poured $15 million of taxpayers’ money into their latest attempt to plan a way to take water from the Gila — one of the last free-flowing rivers in the West. Despite the considerable expense, the state has little to show for it. It’s time to cut our losses.
Stopping work on the Gila project now would free up about $75 million in federal funding that could be used on other water supply projects in the four counties of southwestern New Mexico. The Grant County Regional Water Project, for example, would supply water to roughly 26,000 people in mining communities such as Bayard and Hurley.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham campaigned on opposing the Gila project. Earlier this year, she vetoed some planning money for the project and has said she wants the remaining federal money spent on other water supply projects. Yet the project still stumbles along.
The Gila River flows out of the Gila Wilderness, the nation’s first wilderness area. It was set aside on the recommendation of pioneering conservationist Aldo Leopold, who also founded the New Mexico Wildlife Federation.
The current Gila project is the latest in a series of similar proposals dating back some 50 years. Each of the earlier projects was scrapped after studies found them too expensive and potentially environmentally harmful.
Nonetheless, Congress in 2004 gave New Mexico a choice: It could either accept federal funding to build projects to meet water needs across the four southwestern counties, or it could get more money to build a diversion project on the Gila. The New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission in 2014 opted for the Gila diversion project.
The Interstate Stream Commission created an entity, called the New Mexico Central Arizona Project Entity, to plan the project. The CAP Entity has considered diverting water from two locations on the Gila River and from one location on the San Francisco River, a Gila tributary.
The Gila diversion project would rely on a complicated system of water purchases in which New Mexico would have to buy water from Arizona to cover what it would divert from the river. There’s opposition among some in Arizona to the idea of giving up their Gila River water.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation also recently expressed concerns about whether the project can meet looming federal deadlines.
Norm Gaume, an engineer and former director of the Interstate Stream Commission, has been a stalwart critic of the current Gila diversion plan. Gaume recently gave a talk at a New Mexico Wildlife Federation event in Albuquerque.
Gaume said the Interstate Stream Commission funded an environmental impact statement in 2016. “But it took two years for them to come up with even a sketch of an idea of what they wanted, and basically their original ideas all had failed too,” he said.
“One of the telling criticisms is that after spending
$15 million on so-called planning, they don’t have a feasibility study, they have never contracted for a feasibility study or any kind of a benefit-cost analysis,” Gaume said.
A recent preliminary draft environmental impact statement concluded the project would cost roughly $50 million but only produce about 1,300 acre feet of water a year, benefiting fewer than 100 irrigators, Gaume said. It would cost $3 million a year to provide enough water to grow crops with a market value of only $1.5 million before expenses, he said.
Like its predecessors that died in the planning stage, this Gila diversion project makes no sense. The New Mexico Wildlife Federation calls on all state residents to urge Lujan Grisham to kill it.
We must protect the Gila River for future generations of New Mexicans and for the wildlife that relies on the river in its natural state.