City: Water future stable, but situation fluid
Official says Santa Fe could produce 6K more acre-feet than necessary for 2023 population, but conservation important amid climate change
Lower-than-budgeted water usage by the average Santa Fe resident is saving the city thousands of acre-feet — or hundreds of millions of gallons — a year, Water Division data shows.
However, as the high desert landscape of Northern New Mexico continues to see the effects of climate change, the city will have to stay vigilant about conserving its water resources.
“We always want people to be thinking about water conservation, even if we’re not in an emergency state,” said City Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth, chairwoman of the Water Conservation Committee, at a meeting Tuesday.
Water Division Director Jesse Roach delivered a presentation to the committee on the state of the city’s 2024 water supply, which he said is stable.
A more detailed picture of where the city’s water resources stand will be presented to city councilors at upcoming meetings and to members of the public at two meetings April 25.
A city ordinance requires the Water Division director to provide an update to the city manager by April 15 of each year about the state of the water supply compared with anticipated demand, which will influence whether the city needs to implement emergency measures.
After a “catastrophic emergency” in the water supply in 2002 caused largely by unsustainable use of well water coupled with drought, Roach said, the city has built significant resiliency into its system, including construction of the Buckman Direct Diversion northwest of the city, along the Rio Grande. Previously, the city relied more heavily on groundwater.
The upcoming presentation, titled “What’s
Up With Water,” will include information about the city’s water supply; the status of Two Mile Pond, a popular wetlands area on Santa Fe’s east side that was reduced last year to half its size; upcoming projects like work on Nichols Dam in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed; and the city’s long-term plans to increase its water supply.
Most significantly, the city has proposed a “return flow” pipeline from its wastewater treatment plant on Paseo Real to the Rio Grande. The pipeline would send treated effluent back into the river, earning credits toward future water from the San Juan-Chama Project, a complex diversion system that carries San Juan River water from Colorado to the Rio Grande via the Rio Chama. The city pulls its share of San Juan-Chama water at the Buckman Direct Diversion.
The city could produce a maximum of about 19,500 acre-feet of water a year through its four water sources, though that is not sustainable year over year, Roach said.
The city’s four water sources are Santa Fe River flows stored in McClure Reservoir and Nichols Reservoir and treated at the Canyon Road Water Treatment Plant; San Juan-Chama water from the Buckman Direct Diversion; groundwater from wells and in the city; and from the Buckman Well Field. The vast majority of the current supply comes from surface water.
One acre-foot of water, about 326,000 gallons, is considered enough to supply the water needs of two or three average U.S. households for one year.
The city’s water demand for the year is calculated at 130 gallons per resident per day, Roach said, totaling about 13,000 acre-feet a year based on a 2023 estimated population of 89,001.
That number is well below the maximum of 19,500 and above actual city water use last year, which Roach said was 9,801 acrefeet per person per year, or about 97 gallons a day.
Instead of simply calculating demand, the city has used a 10-point water resource indicator since 2022 to determine the health of its water supply. The indicator factors in how much surface water and groundwater the city has available and the region’s drought level.
Zero would represent an extreme water emergency on the scale and 10 “very wet conditions,” according to city documents. At the end of 2023, the city was at a 6.5.
A graph on the city’s water supply from 2000 to January 2024 showed the city hitting a zero on the scale in 2002.
“Since then, in this 24-year period — of which the first 20 years is the driest 20-year period in the tree ring record for this region, so we’re talking megadrought — during that period we have as a utility climbed out of emergency status and into a very comfortable, from a water perspective, status,” Roach said.
In recent years the city has bounced between 6 and 10 on the scale, depending on local drought conditions, he said.
Romero-Wirth, who also sits on the Buckman Direct Diversion Board, noted part of the improvement over the last two decades came from the river diversion, which was brought online in 2011. In a typical year, about half the city’s water comes from the diversion.
Adding more water to the system won’t always be an option, Romero-Wirth said, especially as climate change leads to drier conditions in the Southwest.
“In terms of conservation, we continue to have places to go,” Romero-Wirth said.