Pojoaque Basin water system work begins after long legal battle
When legal wrangling began in 1966 over how users should share the Pojoaque Basin’s finite water supply, no one likely foresaw that a new water source would take more than a half-century to tap.
Construction crews have begun work on the Pojoaque Basin regional water system that will serve several pueblos and hundreds of nonpueblo users in the corridor between Santa Fe and Española.
It’s the first of three phases to build an enormous system that will pull and treat water from the Rio Grande to ease the strain on the area’s wells and streams.
Construction itself is the final phase in resolving one of the longest-running water disputes in the country, known as the Aamodt litigation. Congress approved a settlement agreement in 2010 followed by more legal tussles, congressional actions and negotiations to revise it.
The case showed how complex and
contentious New Mexico’s water management can be.
“It’s a huge milestone that we’re in actual construction,” said Mary Carlson, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation, the agency in charge of building the system.
Crews are now installing collection wells at San Ildefonso Pueblo, where a treatment plant will be built.
It will have treatment facilities, storage tanks and 150 miles of pipelines to supply up to 4,000 acre-feet of drinking water a year — about 1.3 billion gallons — to the Nambe, Tesuque, San Ildefonso and Pojoaque pueblos as well as to other Santa Fe County customers in the basin, according to agency data.
In addition, about seven miles of electrical lines supplemented by solar power will be installed for the water system.
It will take about eight years to finish the system. The federal government’s portion will cost $400 million, Carlson said.
The agency’s spending cap for the project is $200 million, she said.
Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico introduced a bill last year to increase maximum funding to $456 million, but it stalled.
In June, the Senate unanimously passed a bill to cover the required work in the Aamodt settlement, said Ned
Adriance, a Udall spokesman.
“We remain optimistic that this priority will be authorized by the full Congress this year,” Adriance said.
The city and county of Santa Fe will chip in a combined $115 million to the project.
The pueblos, city and county spent a year negotiating over a funding gap, shaving about $15 million from their final costs.
The deal calls for the federal government to annually buy 2,500 acre-feet of water that flows from the Colorado River basin into the Rio Grande via the San Juan-Chama system. The county will supply an additional 750 acre-feet of water to nonpueblo residents through the Pojoaque regional system.
To curb water diverted from the Rio Grande — a river heavily tapped — the county in 2015 bought Top of the World Farm, about 80 miles upstream, and with that purchase received 1,754 acrefeet in water rights, said John Utton, a county water attorney.
The county then sold the rights for 1,143 acre-feet of water to the federal government for the four pueblos’ use in the regional system, Utton said. The county sold the farm to the Healy family, which will phase out the use of river water for irrigation as the regional system ramps up, he said.
“We can’t just keep taking more … out of the river,” said John Dupuis, county utilities division director.
The Aamodt water rights litigation grew out of concerns the basin lacked the water to fulfill everyone’s needs and rights, especially during droughts. Agricultural and household demands for water came into conflict.
Many households in the region rely on wells for drinking water and for irrigating gardens. A hydrological study determined that pumping these wells sometimes reduced the flow of streams, which supply water to growers, both on and off pueblo lands.
As the oldest water rights holders, pueblo residents are first in line for drawing water. That means if a drought depletes water supply, they can make a “priority call,” which can prevent other users from getting water.
Under the settlement, the pueblos agreed to a priority call limit during dry times.
Nonpueblo residents have a few options, Utton said. They can connect to the new system, partially connect to the system and keep their wells for outdoor use, or stick with their wells, he said.
If they opt to stay solely with their wells, they could be subject to pueblos’ priority calls during water shortages, Utton said.
Utton said he has tried to sell residents on the benefits of the new system, such as not worrying about a well running dry or getting contaminated.
“There’s the new system … if they want water that’s clean and tested,” Utton said. “We always try kind of a soft touch, using a carrot. We don’t want to force anybody to do anything.”