Water, and a harsh reality facing the Sandia Basin and Estancia Basin
There is a harsh reality facing the East Mountain communities that no one really wants to talk about and no one, especially the local governments, wants to deal with. We are quickly running out of water. By official (and in my opinion very optimistic) estimates a child born today will still likely be alive when we have effectively depleted all of the potable water stored up in local, accessible underground aquifers over thousands of years.
A more realistic (unofficial) estimate on when this problem will come out from under the rug is just a couple decades away. And for the hundreds and hundreds of households that have already lost access to affordable, potable water as a result of reckless overpumping of groundwater resources this problem is old news.
Effective water management is similar to managing your finances. If you live within your means and keep your expenses below your income you don't go broke. So what is the effective water income in the East Mountains? The short answer is 'it depends.’ It depends on how much rain and snowfall we receive, it depends on the health of the forests and the soils, and it depends on the geological formations underneath the soil.
So while there is plenty of variation from one spot to another, if you want to get a ballpark average you can expect a small percentage, in most cases just a fraction of a percent, of annual precipitation to make it back to the aquifers. Most if it will run off, get used by plants, or evaporate. So if we get an average of 18 inches of precipitation and 1% of that makes it back into the aquifer you get a little less than a fifth of an inch of recharge. Say we got 24 inches of precipitation and were able to restore the health of our forests and fields to the point we were getting a whopping 5% of that back into the aquifers we would get well over an inch of recharge.
That gives you an idea of what your water income is; now let's consider our water expenditures. In the Sandia sub-basin, multiple well-monitoring programs provide extensive data on what is happening to our groundwater levels, and they are going down at an average of nearly 2.5 feet per year. The official estimate from the Office of the State Engineer for the Sandia Basin is that over 80% of wells will go dry within the next 40 years.
Looking south and east into the Estancia Basin, the situation is not terribly dissimilar. Groundwater levels are dropping at around one foot per year, while recharge is likely less than in the Sandia Basin, which has much more complex, faulted geology that makes it easier for water to infiltrate. Again official estimates put the Estancia Basin 70 years out from effectively running out of water.
And yet despite the fact that there is legally defensible, court-tested scientific evidence that our communities’ only water resources are being rapidly depleted, local governments continue to allow demand on our already overtaxed resources to continue growth. There are over 7,500 lots here under Bernalillo County's jurisdiction that are approved for development, and most of those can be further subdivided down to two-acre parcels with a survey and a trip to the county clerk's office.
Under state law every one of those lots automatically qualifies for a well permit and the right to use one acre foot of water per year (326,000 gallons). The town of Edgewood just re-approved a 4,000-home subdivision on the San Pedro land grant (aka Campbell Ranch)—on top of all of the undeveloped lots in the town proper— with no identified water resource to support it. Between Sandoval County, Bernalillo County, Torrance County, Santa Fe County, and all of the municipal governments scattered throughout the area, there is effectively no legal cap on demand for a vital resource that is extremely finite and quickly running out.
The stated logic is that the government cannot prevent further development because that would hurt people's property values and the government can legally be held liable for any financial loss someone incurs as a result of the government taking away a development right. It begs the question: What happens to everyone's property values when we run out of water?
Zach Withers
Sandia Park