Acequias and Adjudication: A blog on water rights in New Mexico.

New water works, a new water czar, and the same challenges ending 2011

2011-12-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

Last post of 2011!

It’s been too long, yet again. So this will be the last post for this calendar year of 2011. There are so many issues and events of interest to cover, since last August, I’m not sure where to start. So here I’ll simply start with some regional issues, first with Texas (?!), then moving on to the usual New Mexico water issues, challenges, and battles. There was also big news out of Santa Fe, namely with the appointment of a new state engineer. Finally I drop a plug or two for some books that have recently appeared that should be of interest to all residents of the Southwest if you care (at all) about water in our region.

NPR had an interesting story on water issues in Texas specifically that I thought was worth sharing – see below. I’m not sure if they are “things you didn’t know” about water in the Lone Star state, but some are intriguing.

Water in Texas:

http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2011/11/15/five-things-you-didnt-know-about-water-in-texas/

The water year in New Mexico, as in most parts of the Southwest, was grim during 2011. If 2010 was “meh” by way of rainfall and snow, then 2011 was a big, fat uh-oh. The region entered its second straight La Niña pattern, which means (typically) less rainfall, less snow, and a certainly drier winter. Is that what we’re getting, as I write this in late December? Well, it’s a mixed picture honestly. The Colorado high country is drier this year, with less snowpack, and it’s certainly now the snowbonanza that 2009-10 was. New Mexico and Arizona, along with SE Colorado, and well…. All of Texas have taken it on the chin as far as rainfall. But there has been a decent set of snowfalls in New Mexico, at least, in the early part of winter 2011. Will it extend to 2012? The good folks at CLIMAS, the regional climate assessment service out of the University of Arizona, are not promising much for late winter.

Water in NM (supply/drought):

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/localnews/Middle-Rio-Grande-Farmers-worry-about-water-access-as-irrigatio

In other news, the state of New Mexico got its first new state engineer in the last ten years with the new Republican Governor. Her appointee is a relative unknown, Scott Verhines, and he certainly has his work cut out for him. While the OSE has made genuine, and faster, progress on adjudication efforts across the state, there are a few white elephant stream stretches that will likely outlive his presence as state engineer (I’m looking at you, Lower Rio Grande).

New NM OSE State Engineer, Scott Verhines,

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/localnews/-Serious-challenges--ahead-for--new-state-engineer

You can, if you like, see the state’s past state engineers at:

http://www.ose.state.nm.us/state_engineer_past_state_engineers.html

Water transfers, in New Mexico, show no signs of abating and no signs of fading as a regional and local object of environmental politics. Wild Earth Guardians, for example, is contesting some notable water rights transfers, and this merits following if you have an interest. So not only are local ditches contesting transfers away from their stream flows, and ditch flows, now you have NGOs increasingly intervening in the water transfer issue. Is this the only way to keep a healthy set of river flows? Is it the only way to keep endangered species on the radar for the state? Stay tuned…(below)

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/localnews/WildEarth-Guardians-object-to-water-rights-transfer

Finally, on water news, I want to highlight some local coverage in New Mexico regarding the so-called Aamodt adjudication, basically the Pojoaque River Valley basin, and the so-called “celebration” that this funded settlement created. Celebration by whom? That’s a better question, since I witnessed some of the settlement hearing open meetings this past summer – depending on who you are, there’s either something or very little to celebrate – so I can only guess that the involved attorneys, the BuRec folks, the BIA, the city of Santa Fe, and the county of Santa Fe are the ones who are pleased with the settlement (in that, the process might…just might, be over). Does this settle things? Better question.

Aamodt settlement (latest)

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/localnews/Water-deal-sparks-celebration

Finally, and yes, the link is from Aljazeera, I want to put in a plug for Bill deBuys’ latest book (A Great Aridness) which addresses the real, tangible, or emerging signs of (warming) climate change in the Greater Southwest. I finally had a chance to read it over the early part of my winter break, and it’s a great book, and also a great service to people living in the region. While Bill is a well-known resident in El Valle, New Mexico, this latest book is not just about New Mexico. He does, however, make recurring references to the Rio Grande, and the large wildfires of the past decade in the state. Read more about it in this opinion column published by Bill (below) – I’ll post more links just below it, so that you can purchase and read it at your leisure. The other volume is V.B. Price’s The Orphaned Land, a quirky yet large compendium of staccato-style writings on environmental justice, history, water, pollution, and radiation issues in the state of New Mexico. It’s a great, easy, read that you can consume all at once (python-style) or in the brief snippets that are of most interest. Check out both of these – you won’t be sorry.

Overall drought picture (from deBuys, age of thirst):
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011127125429770306.html

W deBuys’ A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest. Oxford University Press, available at

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Aridness-Climate-American-Southwest/dp/0199778922/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325123319&sr=1-1 or better yet, your local bookstore…

V.B. Price’s The Orphaned Land: New Mexico’s Environment Since the Manhattan Project. UNM Press.

http://www.amazon.com/Orphaned-Land-Mexicos-Environment-Manhattan/dp/0826350496/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325123364&sr=1-1 or better yet, your local bookstore

I’ll have more to say in the upcoming weeks, I promise, on these books in a more substantive post. Until 2012, amigos...

Putting the monitoring back into "AWRM"?

2011-08-16T11:27:00.001-06:00

For this month's post, I'm choosing to focus on the state of New Mexico's "active water resource management" program, which I'm unofficially re-naming the active water resource monitoring program. Why? Read on...

I'm just back from the Rio Mimbres, in southwestern New Mexico, a beautiful and verdant valley even in this horrible drought year (the driest on record for most parts of the state, serious business). In past posts, I'd made mention of the Mimbres as both fully adjudicated and already in the AWRM program that the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) runs. About eight years old as a piece of state statute, less old in terms of actual existence, AWRM has triggered controversy, grumbling, and one lawsuit that questioned its legality.

On the Mimbres, the trigger was the Bounds case, and it has created real difficulties for folks on the so-called "upper Mimbres" (basically north of Rt 152 that runs E-W across the valley) with folks downstream less affected by the consequences. The Bounds case involved one of the few actual priority calls in the state of New Mexico, and people of all stripes scrambled to find a solution or implement some version of a fair system to address it. AWRM has involved a system of "signed agreements," done with OSE regional staff out of the Deming office, to have stream flows and ditches monitored with water meters. These have been of a couple of varieties: one has been the ditch kind, a rather restricting concrete flow device with a scale slapped to the side. The other is a larger metering device meant to monitor larger tributary flows around the state (see the photo), such as the one picture here at the outlet of Bear Canyon before it hits the ditches and stream banks of the Rio Mimbres. You can also read more about this metering and measurement program here, courtesy of the OSE.

There have been on-going claims of alleged bullying by the OSE's personnel to "sign" these metering agreements (without the "or else" usually involved in such tactics) and this has not exactly created a favorable environment in many parts of the state where AWRM is in place (see the prior post on the Gallinas near Las Vegas, for example). Now, that said, it's nearly impossible to begrudge a parastatal agency charged with water administration. After all, the OSE is supposed to adjudicate (done for the Mimbres), monitor (nearly there for the Mimbres according to this .pdf map), and then manage through priority administration (not really, for the Mimbres), right? You do have to wonder what "99% complete" actually means for AWRM on the Mimbres, considering that most folks on the lower Mimbres are not monitored or metered, nor have they signed off on the plan. I am not arguing that management isn't necessary or important in a state that will see on-going lack of rain for the foreseeable future. Perhaps we should not even be using the rather antiquated word "drought" anymore, if this will be the new normal in the Greater Southwest.

Once again, if I harp on anything, it is the scale and nature of water governance and management in this state and frankly all others in the western U.S. Instead of building more, or relying on, massive infrastructure, why not emphasize and enrich the institutions that already exist on the ground that clearly have more adaptive capacity on more watersheds in New Mexico? Yes, I'm talking about community ditches and acequias. Yes, I favor a strong role for agricultural producers (the ones that remain at least).

One of the recurring themes in travel, reading, and attendance at conferences is that the era of "big water development is over." Really? Have these people been paying attention? New pipelines, regional water systems, trans-basin diversion projects are all in the works. Just because we aren't building Hoover Dam II doesn't mean that hydraulic infrastructure of a serious sort is gone. The Iron Triangle (feds, senators, state engineers) is alive and well. On a side-note, as we drove down to the Mimbres, we made a pit-stop at the mother of all dams in New Mexico, Elephant Butte. The dam and its irrigation district is once again in the news, because of New Mexico's concerns about a new operating agreement that seemingly favors Texas in its new balance sheet of delivered water. That's debatable. This is the same area that has the LRG adjudication to deal with, a now one of the sides of the iron triangle is suing the EBID over the new arrangement. And as anyone on the Rio Grande knows, the LRG adjudication may trigger new difficulties upstream towards Albuquerque (MRGCD) and Santa Fe, as Staci Matlock has recently suggested. It's not even close to being over, folks. Given the long and complicated re-engineering of the entire basin of the Rio Grande (see Reining in the Rio Grande, a new book) to serve human needs, perhaps we need to add a leg to the triangle. The iron square? What was missing in the iron triangle? Water law, and how it facilitated and complicated these situations. How's that for a teaser?

Until next time...

Return of the blog, part 68

2011-07-12T11:33:00.000-06:00

This is a long-overdue quick post to get my blogging engine running again. I'm now back in New Mexico, on the outskirts of the captial, with a spectacular view from our casita of the Jemez Mountains and its current state of smoke and fire. In the first week of July, the scene was straight out of a Lord of the Rings set of Mordor (photo).

I'm here to not only try to write several pieces on the larger water governance, adjudication, and acequias project but also to work with one of our Southwest Studies majors and a rising senior at Colorado College, Andrew Wallace. He has chosen to look at the Aamodt adjudication, now in settlement talks with all stakeholders, and how legal pluralism is or is not visible in the original case and the run-up to the settlement itself. Legal pluralism is a concept that originates from the critical legal studies literature, as well as from anthropologists like Laura Nader who made extensive use of it in her work, that speaks to whether multiple forms of legal understandings are both present and visible (and perhaps accepted) in any given area. Here's a resource list for folks interested in the nexus between legal studies and anthropology. New Mexico certainly has several unspoken layers of legal pluralism, even if the law of the land is supposed to be prior appropriation.
So it should be a fun, informative, and rollicking two months here in New Mexico as we both sink our teeth into another mass of literature, interviews, and archival documents. As I read more, and write just a bit on these issues, I'm convinced I'm missing 90% of the story on water governance. And that's what makes for fascinating research. Until next time...

Adjudication Round-table (March 18, 2011 report)

2011-04-10T14:21:00.000-06:00

Well, more than two months have gone by (again), and I'm in the position of playing a bit of catch-up for the purposes of this blog. Hopefully I can begin to re-commit to these writing activities now that stand-up teaching (always a curious phrase) is over for me at CC. I wanted to report on a fascinating, and inter-disciplinary, conversation hosted by Sylvia Rodriguez (Prof Emeritus, UNM Anthropology) this past March 18, 2011 at the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. The point of the conversation was the water adjudication process in New Mexico, putatively, but we wandered far and wide on topics ranging from ecosystem rights to water, to Powell' original "watershed" democracy proposal in the 19th century, to how other states have coped (or haven't) with the demands of a general stream adjudication.

After some formal and informal introductions, our discussion started to hone in on the real issues of "why adjudication" started in the first place; there are simple reasons for a state to do so, apart from state mandates and statutes. As one technician at OSE shared with me back in 2009, "How can we manage water when we don't even know how much water there is available to manage?" Yet bringing suit to force people to document or substantiate their water use in a watershed is a shifting target. We discussed how the changes in mapping and data technology now allows the OSE to make much quicker work for adjudication field-mapping. The old maps, for example, for the past adjudications were commonly on linen and Mylar. As soon as crop and water use were recorded, those data (for that growing season) were largely obsolete, since farmers change crops, and thus change water use year to year. This is why, frankly, the so-called "STS" or science and technology studies literature, is relevant and interesting. If technology does indeed change us, and that technology changes over time, well then.... The other related prong to this conversation is frankly the development imperative that still rules water governance and adjudication concerns: the reason for adjudication is not only to quantify and assign rights, but also to figure out "what is left" for apportioning out and planning for future water development. It tickled this geographer to hear someone (a non-geographer) actually use (David) Harvey's phrase of "accumulation by dispossession" - and what this means is complex: It can mean that by establishing some use first, even before rights are assigned or verified, one can accumulate rights even as a junior water rights user. Or, it can mean the simple and outright purchase of water rights away from rural (in theory) water users, as urban areas grow and demand more municipal water. Or... well, again, you get the point.

As a group, we discussed how the recent federally-funded water settlements (Aamodt for Pojoaque; Abeyta for Taos) will be implemented. Since they are now settled, they now avoid state courts. The files will be considered 'closed' and a decree issued if parties to the settlement can agree that there are no longer serious issues in each watershed. That remains to be seen, and is frankly the basis for some on-going research this coming summer. Do settlements actually "settle" adjudications?

The discussion was also recorded by Jack Loeffler, who created a multi-CD set of audio recordings on the Colorado River which are absolutely fabulous (Watersheds as Commons) and are highly recommended if you are a water wonk or education of any kind. We'll see what comes of these recordings, and how we can (and cannot) use them or make them available. Given my inelegant oral eruptions, I can only imagine how some might take the statements we shared with each other in odd ways. But the conversation was valuable, and given our very different backgrounds, goals, and interests, totally worthwhile. I thank Sylvia Rodriguez for bringing us all together. The last hour of our dialogue was really to focus some attention for a special issue of the Journal of the Southwest on water adjudications in the Southwest, centered on New Mexico and Arizona. But more on the latter will be forthcoming later this year (September). Finally, after a long day, we decided to stay in touch and share resources - perhaps this group, along with others, will convene again.

If only I'd had this kind of resource and conversation five years ago as I was entertaining this project on adjudication and acequias.

For the record, the attendees were:Herb Becker, long-time lawyer for the DoJ (and active in Indian water suits)
Darcy Bushnell, the UNM Utton Center, Director of the Stell Ombudsman Program
Leslie Kryder, Technical Assistance Provider at Rural Community Assistance Corporation
Jack Loeffler, Lore of the Land (and session recorder)
Sam Markwell (UNM graduate student, Am Studies)
Eric Perramond (Colorado College)
Sylvia Rodriguez, Prof Emeritus of Anthropology, UNM & our host (also the Ortiz Center at UNM)
Melanie Stansbury (ABD, Sociology, Cornell University)
Elise Trott (UNM graduate student, Anthro)

Post-settlement adjudications?

2011-01-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

This month's "acequias and adjudication" update will be old news for most of you who follow these issues closely, so apologies in advance. The point of this small post is to push through the seemingly finalized and maybe mundane details of an adjudication "settlement" and ask "what comes next?"

The Aamodt (Pojoaque Basin, NM) and the Abeyta (Taos Valley, NM) adjudications have been legally resolved through settlements funded, finally, by the U.S. Congress and the President's signature. This is good news for residents who worried about the long-term implications of these two pending lawsuits that embroiled locals, state officials, attorneys, the respective tribes, and finally, the federal agencies. Both of these lawsuits, shockingly, were older than I am, born in the late 1960s when water infrastructure and future projects pushed the state to finally file suit to document the water rights in the two water basins.

You can easily find the details of what's involved in other posts, in news outlets, or even in the Congressional records and/or some of the publically-available information from the State Office of the Engineer (of NM). I'm not going to belabor the details here. It does strike me, however, that in both cases there are several "high prices" to the settlement. Personally (and professionally?), I find the Abeyta settlement for the Taos Valley to be more... well, democratic and feasible. Abeyta is not without its problems as the previous link makes clear, and regional water planners will have to be careful not to violate the terms of these settlements. And municipalities and counties have to watch out that their public welfare measures (on water) don't violate the historic easement and access rights for maintaining acequias. But Abeyta won't involve another giant set of pipelines and water infrastructure, at least not in the short-term, unlike the Aamodt settlement. Plus, residents will want to keep an eye out for the "roll out" phase of the new regional water system in the Pojoaque Valley. The state and (SF) county officials have said that non-Indian residents won't be forced to join the system and that they can keep older wells without any risk.

The lack of a firm plan in the Pojoaque Basin, and a clear proposal, leads to a lot of rumor-mongering however. So hopefully we'll get a fully fleshed-out blueprint, and one that comes with a genuine full accounting of (future) costs, soon. These lawsuits were settled out of formal adjudication court, in a settlement setting, but that doesn't mean that the details are finalized, that it's "over," or that there's nothing left to be vigilant about in the two valleys. And residents know this well, already. If adjudication was supposed to proceed using a coarse watershed approach, New Mexicans will have to pay attention that the "better mouse-trap" of a regional water system in the Pojoaque doesn't betray the intentions of water's own behavior in the region. You can order a copy of the "feasibility study" from Santa Fe county here.

Until next time...

Aamodt, Abeyta, Pojoaque Regional Water System

2010-12-04T18:25:00.000-07:00

First of all, apologies for the long interval and delay in this latest post. I had hoped to keep posting at a pace of about one comment per month, and administrative duties have taken their toll on this blog. But there's big news out from this past week, for all New Mexicans, even if the Aamodt-Abeyta settlements (for the Pojoaque Valley and Taos Valley, respectively) are supposed to be constrained to those water basins. The effects simply won't be. Funding for the settlement was approved on November 30th by the U.S. House of Representatives after already clearing the Senate, and it has money attached.

The timing is tight, and frankly, lucky for those people who would fashion themselves as 'proponents' of the settlement. The legal team at the Office of the State Engineer must be relieved, if not overjoyed, that these old adjudications are seemingly put to rest. It puts to rest two of the longest running court processes in United States history, and will re-configure the "active adjudications" map (the one posted is from 2003).

Oh, there's only one catch, a new $81 million regional water system, to divert water from the Rio Grande, for the Pojoaque Valley and largely its non-Pueblo population. The reactions are mixed, and long-term observers remain skeptical of how 'optional' the hook-up to the water line will actually be if and when the system is actually built. Will the bill provide relief for Pueblo and non-Pueblo residents? Will it help, in any way, the environmental in-stream flow, of the Pojoaque River itself? I leave you with a typical photo of the Pojoaque taken in October of 2009. Until next time, and this time, I promise to post sooner!

Hasta pronto!

The glowing calm of the nuclear aquatic

2010-09-12T09:36:00.000-06:00

Hello again - as I begin the submersion into a week 2 field excursion with my "political ecology of the Southwest" course here at Colorado College, I wanted to share a few thoughts about this particular course. We adopted a theme of "nuclear borderlands," an obvious play on Joseph Masco's (2006) excellent book by the same title, and one of our focus points is the relationship between the nuclear era and water quality in northern New Mexico. And it's difficult to talk about this region without discussing the role of "the lab" in every day life. I'm referring to Los Alamos National Laboratories here, and the small (federal company) town of Los Alamos, perched on the Pajarito Plateau.
We are beginning our week with a guided tour of the political ecology of northern New Mexico, hitting on the major historical-geographic discussion points that have to be understood in context, highlighting the cultural diversity of the region. Among the topics we will discuss as we roll in a CC shuttle through the San Luis Valley is the always-present "land grants" issue in southern CO and northern NM. This is a reference to the historic alienation of about 90-95% of the historic Spanish and Mexican land grants that vaporized in a filter of greed, poor law, and questionable land (titling) ethics in the territorial period of New Mexico. Most of that land is now either entirely privately held, not by communities, or in federal and state hands.

The rest of the week (9/13 - 9/17) will be spent understanding how the Cold War era and the presence of federal research labs has irradiated the Southwest. We'll meet with nuclear, local activists, federal employees at Los Alamos, water resouce managers, and concerned NGO operators from the Pueblo perspective. In terms of water, however, the singular focus (as a case study of sorts) is the Buckman Diversion Dam. Familiar to anyone in northern New Mexico, this is the latest effort to purportedly wean the city of Santa Fe away from declining groundwater resources and towards surface water use of the Rio Grande/Chama. How this links to the 'nuclear' theme is that the intake point at the old site of Buckman, along the Rio Grande, is right across from many of the most contaminated canyon tributaries that drain the Pajarito Plateau. For almost twenty years, Los Alamos dumped nuclear and hazardous wastes into the nearby canyons, and the diversion dam itself has had to be designed with this in mind. This was before remediation and mitigation were watch-words for the industry, and compliance was weak at best. Now, it's at least a major component of LANL environmental management programs.

The point of this is to highlight the ecology of "risk" in New Mexico, in terms of water and radiation, but also to get students to grapple with multiple perspectives on the subject. What is the official story-line? Are locals engaging in conspiracy theory, or are there real concerns here to take into account? How can we filter through public relations rhetoric, the contemporary version of "propaganda" that was so common during the Cold War? How does Los Alamos continue to shape the changing ecology and mutating social relations of the Pajarito Plateau and northern New Mexico? How did residents benefit economically, even if environments were affected?
These are difficult, troubling, and admittedly leading questions - but it's the substance of our week.
And it's also the substance that enters our bodies. More later, on this issue of the glow, the calm, the irradiated, and that which enters us directly.

Old World-New World, belated

2010-08-06T11:29:00.000-06:00

So, we are finally back from the Pyrenees. As part of our time in southern France/northern Spain, I poked around villages and countryside to see how irrigation infrastructure and social institutions are surviving. The news is mixed, even for a region that has decent water supplies, and there's real differentiation between FR and ESP in this case. On the French side, the infrastructure of canals looks OK, but the social institutions are facing new pressures as new immigrants to the region show up, without much understanding of the norms for access to water rights (sound familiar?).

On the Spanish side, it's infrastructure that needs help, while the social side seems to be in better shape by way of basic functioning and understanding of rules and customs. The other interesting aspect is the accepted mix of function (canal) with recreation (hiking trail) that epitomizes the region. The banks of irrigation canals frequently serve the purpose of trail, as on the GR10 trail that goes from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic (Banyuls to Hendaye, respectively). It's just another reminder that "following the water," as New Mexicans put it poetically, is a long-time custom and part of daily life in this part of the world. There's simply too much to write about, but I'll post an other update soon on older (modernizing) mechanisms for timing irrigation and cooperation in some of the villages of the Conflent (in the Pyrenees-Orientales, FR side). Until next time, enjoy the photos, and keep watering. Colorado Springs has had decent rain for this time of year, and everythign is green. May your gardens and fields bloom and prosper.

Quickpost: Oily water governance (and lack thereof)

2010-06-18T08:21:00.000-06:00

I'm not a huge Brooks fan, but this quote (and his column today) are quite appropriate both for the Gulf oil fiasco and for water governance in general (and certainly for local acequia vs centralized water management issues!): "The balance between federal oversight and local control is off-kilter. We have vested too much authority in national officials who are really smart, but who are really distant. We should be leaving more power with local officials, who may not be as expert, but who have the advantage of being there on the ground." And frankly, the same applies to "state experts" as well - even when earnest, there's only so much (or so little) folks in Santa Fe can actually do when it comes to water resource management (or lack thereof). Read the whole column by Brooks, focused on the bungled fed-BP clean-up coordination efforts, here.

Hydraulic Archipelago, first post

2010-06-17T17:31:00.000-06:00

So with a full week now under my belt, after returning from Japan, I'm ready to start tackling some comparative posts. This one is an abstract for what I perceived in general about the way the Japanese have coped with, and modified, natural rivers and streams. First, the places we visited were highly modified urban environments (mostly), and that should be the most important caveat. However, I do want to highlight the amazing and sometimes over-the-top use of concrete in Japan. From urban watersheds (like the Kamo River in Kyoto) to more rural ones on the south island of Kyushu, concrete river-banks and riparian armoring are common. Second, this generalization also counts for coastal locations, where concrete tetrapods litter much of the Japanese coastline.

Finally, one of the highlights for a water geek was to see the aqueduct section of the large Lake Biwa-Kyoto Canal, that starts at (you guessed it) Lake Biwa northeast of the city, and moves water through tunnels, an aqueduct and eventually through urban canals into the old imperial capital of Japan. That the water-work crosses an old Buddhist temple on the east side (Nanzen-ji) is even more remarkable - everywhere in Japan, the immediate intersection between pre-Meiji life and post-Meji were visible. The Meiji period, beginning in 1868, marked the beginning of Japan's long-term engagement with high modernization, a trend that not abated. There's even a high temple to the canal as a work of modernizing Japan, a Lake Biwa-Kyoto Canal Museum, that has a great variety of old maps and photographs displayed. If the hydraulic realm reminded me of anything, it was the strong similarity to European water-works and the strong human imprint on all things natural in the landscape.

Next time: rice paddies, water management!

Celebrando las Acequias (in absentia)

2010-06-12T10:35:00.000-06:00

Hello again friends. As I recover from a where-the-hell-am-I jetlag from the long trip home from Japan, which was 15 hours ahead of Colorado time, I share this link as a BUMP for this weekend's "celebrando las acequias" event in Embudo, New Mexico. Colleague and debonaire activist Estevan Arellano has organized this event, with some great speakers, and is being sponsored by the HUD-funded collaborators from Woodbury University (CA). Wish I could be there to celebrate with you all, compadres y comadres. It looks to be a great time. Saludos, abrazos!

Blog on pause, 5.29-6.11.10

2010-05-29T09:41:00.000-06:00

Just a quick announcement of a "blog break" because of upcoming travel to Japan. It's an academic trip focused on "Nature & Environment in Japan" so I'll likely have some good comparative (water) materials to share when I return to writing. It's a whirlwind trip, too, starting from Tokyo, to Kyoto, to Hiroshima, and we end up in Minamata (as in Minamata Bay, yes), before returning to Tokyo for two final days. I hope to check out the irrigation systems and get some cursory understanding in person about their management institutions. More later, and thanks for your understanding. Soredawa, mata!

TITLE of the book project: See the poll!

2010-05-23T16:49:00.000-06:00

OK folks - for anyone even stumbling on to this blog, I need your opinion on an appropriate book title should this set of interests on adjudication, acequias, water governance be turned into a larger volume. So the titles to the right are the "main" portion of the title, probably followed by some combination of water, democracy, governance, adjudication, etc... but in New Mexico. What do you think?

Hydro-Environmental Orthodoxies

2010-05-22T11:24:00.000-06:00

This post takes its inspiration from my good colleague and fellow geographer Tim Forsyth. His book, Critical Political Ecologies (2003, Routledge) is an under-utilized resource in most natural and social science disciplines, probably because it attempts to address and bridge both big groups. But a number of recent stories, in the press and across the blogosphere, have prompted me to use his 2003 concept of "environmental orthodoxy," to address stories about water. Basically, the concept is simple: an environmental orthodoxy (EO) represents the 'dominant conventional wisdom' on a process we think we understand. So, as one example, how about the term "desertification." Does this mean the spread of sand dunes, or generally the decline of vegetative life-forms from larger tree-like species to scrubbier shrubs? It depends on the user and the point of the author or document, but its range of use is, let's just say, generously wide and flexible.
So here goes...

We lead off with inkstain, John Fleck's blog, and why blaming "drought" as an EO for water issues in the Southwest may be a misnomer. If low precipitation and high variability of annual precipitation define the terms "arid" and semi-arid, then is "drought" really a good term to use in the Southwest? Food for thought - even if we have no simple answer to this.
In many ways, addressing the impact or use of "drought" is a bit like trying to prove that deforestation affects climate, rather than just local weather. Here's a not so recent story about that particular tie, and how complex it is. There's no new conventional wisdom there - but let's just say that the old Colonial-era logic of "trees gone = rain down" doesn't apply so neatly.

Invasive (or "exotic" or "exotic invasive") species are also a problem in many parts of the world, yet the late 20th century stategy of clearing out, say, Tamarisk (salt-cedar as it is regionally known in some parts of the Southwest), may have serious effects on the evapotranspiration balance in streams. The costs and benefits, hydrologically-speaking, are a bit more nebulous than previously thought.
Finally, two stories courtesy of Aquadoc on bottled water and rural water merit mention. So the EOs, respectively, are about whether bottling water is really such a "healthy" thing - challenged by P. Gleick - water may be better than Coke for human beings, but what about the externalities of plastic bottles? And rural water challenges have their EO, ably tackled in this publication about the 7 myths of rural water supply.

So there you have it - does that framework make sense? Is the concept of environmental orthodoxy a useful one for you? There are many more that could be posted here: public vs private water suppliers (with champions and detractors all along that continuum of supply source), carrying capacity, population pressure, soil erosion (vs degradation).

Back to the Neoliberal Future (again)

2010-05-15T10:20:00.001-06:00

Feliz dia de San Isidro! Get ready for a lot of links and tenuous ties -- A series of stories and posts for those of you tracking the future of water use, consumption, and pricing schemes. Many of my fellow aquabloggers make a big deal about whether water is either a commodity or a human right; depending on how "Chicago-school" you are, your own reaction probably varies from "of course you pay for it" to "of course everyone should have access to water as a right." I won't critique positions (yet) but will offer this set of narratives and resources. Try this paper (link) for a perspective on this right to water language; alternatively you can find a number of posts on this issue from the Hayekian perspective at Aguanomics, a recent post is here. The problem with this kind of rhetoric (price it or "make it a right") is that it stays at the binary level (yes/no, black/white, right/commodity). Are there really only two choices to make here? Is it really a choice between Rousseau and Thatcher for water issues? This hardly seems 'creative' and it certainly creates polarized views quickly.

As specific environments are "neoliberalized" (roughly put), it pays to think again about other countries' experiences with full-price costing to farmers, and the precautionary principle applies when this kind of reform is done too quickly, as in the case of Mexico. Yes there is a strong link between "prices" and water consumption (figure courtesy of C. Brooks!). But this roll-back of the hydraulic state agencies is occurring in the U.S. almost everywhere, in this difficult economy, regardless of policy goals on water management (read about the Arizona water resources case here). There is much to be learned from other places, especially the ones that swallowed Washington Consensus rhetoric and policy implementation whole-sale.
(updated 5.17.10 - thanks CB)
Next time: bottling or piping water?

Quickpost: Groundwater law, hydrologic derivative?

2010-05-02T10:14:00.000-06:00

Please see Aquadoc's recent post about groundwater law, marketing, and water use and the problems of jurisprudence when dealing with water below the surface. Is this our equivalent of a hydrologic derivative?
Read on...

Quickpost: New acequia work!

2010-04-30T10:16:00.000-06:00

This is a quick post to acknowledge Michael Cox's (2010) recent dissertation, completed at Indiana University, in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), on the Taos Valley acequias as an integrated social and ecological institution and system. Although largely positive on certain qualities or characteristics of many acequias, Cox sounds a warning note about economic factors that may lead to water leaving the acequia and it's worth the read. So even if acequias are able to weather one side of constant change (climate - global change), it's the economics and political economics that may ultimately create problems for them. It shows how the "double exposures" (Leichenko and O'Brien 2008) of global change and globalization may not work in balance when pressuring local resource management systems. This goes straight to the entire 3mb+ dissertation (.pdf) document if you want full details on this work. Congratulations Michael!

Spring cleaning - recent stories

2010-04-26T13:27:00.001-06:00

I've been remiss. A few developments have occurred in New Mexico, mostly the passing of the Lower Rio Grande adjudication court deadline for the state (NM) to offer the feds (Reclamation) a quantified water right, and that date passed (April 8th). That quantified number will occur whether or not the Reclamation folks actually had or acquired (legally) such water rights at the time that Elephant Butte Dam was constructed. As always, the good folks at Jicarita have been watching this closely. And see Sig Silber's story about the LRG and the ongoing dispute about whether EBID was founded as part of an illegal 'taking' of a private dam and canal company. Hot stuff - and there's an update, too, on LRG proceedings here.

Good news for irrigators in most of New Mexico is that the winter snowpack has piled up, thanks to ENSO, and unless all that snow melts in June, farmers and ranchers should have a decent 2010 growing season. Most of the canals are cleaned around the state, or in the process of getting the limpieza done soon so that the season can begin (in earnest) during May. Hopefully I can get down for San Isidro (May 15).

Two other pieces of news that will be of interest to some readers: first, Floyd Dominy, the self-proclaimed messiah (his words) of the Bureau of Reclamation, is dead at 100. A tough old bastard who stuck to his guns and his beliefs all of his life, his legacy lives on, etched in the mammoth concrete elephants sprinkled liberally around the American West. Vegas would not be what it is today without Dominy, and probably half a dozen cities would have been severely curtailed along the way without his presence. The second news item that caught my attention was the one on the challenges of the Open Meetings Act in New Mexico. It's not just acequias that have trouble complying with the state law - read on for more in a variety of agencies that struggle with OMA. Weber would be proud. A more substantive, and focused, piece is incoming within the week. Stay tuned....acequieros!

Quickpost: Unadjudicated MRG poses problems for water management

2010-04-08T14:07:00.001-06:00

Please see Aquadoc's site for the context, but here's the quick link to a paper by Pease (2010) on the difficulties of managing (and transferring) water in an unadjudicated basin in New Mexico. Yes, it's the Middle Rio Grande. There are lessons here for all Westerners, particularly if you live in an unadjudicated basin. h/t to MC.
Addendum: The entire issue of the JCWRE is available on-line here. The article by Pease is only one of several on water re-allocation issues in the Western U.S.

Review of Carey (2010), and why it's important to New Mexico

2010-04-04T08:53:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, I attended the ASEH (American Society for Environmental History) meetings in Portland, Oregon. As usual, it was a great set of sessions and associated, er... field activities. An intellectual highlight was getting to meet the author of "In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers," Mark Carey, an historian who teaches at Washington & Lee (VA). Why would New Mexicans want to read about Andean society and climate change? Isn't this just about Peru? Obviously, New Mexico doesn't have any "glaciers" to worry about anymore, but the implications of the book for NM are numerous and revolve around the issue of snow-pack and future climate scenarios. The table of contents (below) from Carey (2010, Oxford U Press) should also help people decide whether they need to buy it right now, or just look in their libraries for it.

"Introduction

1. Melted Ice Destroys a City: Huaraz, 1941

2. Geo-Racial Disorder beneath Enchanted Lakes

3. Engineering the Andes, Nationalizing Natural Disaster

4. High Development Follows Disasters

5. In Pursuit of Danger: Defining and Defending Hazard Zones

6. The Story of Vanishing Water Towers

7. The Risk of Neoliberal Glaciers

Conclusion

Appendix 1 Glacier-Related Disasters in Cordillera Blanca History

Appendix 2 Government Entities Conducting Glacier and Glacial Lake Projects

Appendix 3 Selected Cordillera Blanca Glacial Lake Security Projects

Notes"

Carey tracks the story of glaciers in the high Andes of a Peruvian valley, as they evolve from sources of natural hazards (glacial lake outbursts, glacial avalanche, etc...) to potential sources of water for irrigation development and hydroelectricity in the 20th (and 21st) century. You can see some of his Peru-glacier photos here. He emphasizes the role of glaciologists and other local scientists as the intermediary between global concerns over glaciers (and climate change) and local concern over village and urban safety (because of glacial hazards). Careful reading by anthropologists may provoke a little grumbling based on his notion of how locals reacted to hazards planning, but it's an honest and critical reflection on how people can mess their own nests when locals are more concerned about social order and village nostalgia than they are about future safety concerns. Peruvians are not alone - just look around where you live to see people living in the floodplain.

Perhaps the best aspect of the work is that, while focused on Peru and glaciers, Carey throws some comparative light and insight on how many communities world-wide will have to deal with either disappearing glaciers (Andes, Himalayas, Canada) or reduced snow-pack if climate change scenarios can be relied upon. This will only increase the amount of friction between stakeholders vying for hydropower, urban water, and rural irrigation - and that sounds like New Mexico's current state of affairs.

Domestic well hell, part 2 (quick)

2010-03-31T12:42:00.000-06:00

Quickpost: I know what I promised, and that I'm breaking it. More on Andean glaciers, melt-water, in the next post (honest). Here, I'm just going to point out Aquadoc's latest post on exempt wells in the West, and his useful (.pdf) document written by Bracken on this really good overview of Western States and their differential policies on exempt wells. Treatment on New Mexico starts on p 171(-175) if you want a short-cut on reading. Fascinating reading, and a good follow-up to the original post from February on the problem of domestic wells.

Right to Water Conference (Syracuse), geography-style

2010-03-29T08:12:00.000-06:00

A colleague of mine in geography at Syracuse University, Farhana Sultana, has organized a mini-conference on the Right to Water. It runs all day today and tomorrow (March 29th and 30th). The schedule is packed with interesting sessions, speakers, and time for feedback and dialogue; too many conferences, so little time (and money) on sabbatical (?). But it's encouraging to see more geographers entering, or committed to, the fray on water issues. Indirectly, Aquadoc highlighted another geo-moment from the National Academy of Sciences on the future of the geographic sciences -- typically laden and leaden with technohype and praise for GIS. I understand this, even if my head aches with the internal mantra of "the solutions are not technical." And I say this as someone who teaches from this perspective of environmental geography and GIS (it's what I teach!), so I feel free to critique my own tribe.

Another fellow hydroblogger, David Zetland, has been sounding off on this idea of a "right to water" and whether this helps or hurts in producing sound water policy - he thinks it doesn't help. You can see his last post on this issue (one of ten1) here. I'm more ambivalent about this idea, since they are largely symbolic-political gestures at most levels. But no single economic framework has the entire solution, whether based in radical political economy or in more traditional neo-classical garb. Next time: a critical and sympathetic review of Mark Carey's new book on melting glaciers in the (Peruvian) Andes.

Water rights to water power, quickpost

2010-03-26T08:39:00.001-06:00

Quickpost: There's another competitor emerging to the recent plans by Mr. Million (the name is not a joke, but how suitable); a new group is proposing an alternate pipeline transfer plan between the Colorado River basin and Front Range cities. [This story courtesy of John Fleck's connections.] Colorado has already perfected water the--, er, inter-basin water transfers, as seen in the map. How much longer before we're all living in some simulacrum of nature? Is there such thing as a natural river anymore?

Most of my attention this past year has been focused on individuals with water rights, or the community's access and rights to water (acequias), in New Mexico. But this is what happens when states and large metropolitan areas increasingly assert their own allocations and "paper rights" to "wet water." It's also how paper rights translate to power in a basin. And this kind of pipe-rattling does little to benefit interstate diplomacy for river compats. So I'll ask the not so rhetorical question once again: It may be legal, but is it right?

Real estate titles and acequias

2010-03-17T13:25:00.000-06:00

A recent post on the TVAA pages caught my eye, written by a real estate agent based in Espanola. It reads nicely, and it's meant for a wider audience looking to buy property. This is not an anti-property, anti-real estate screed, it's merely a reminder. One of the easiest ways to protect acequias as a ditch, institution, and their important easements is to spread the word about them prior to new property ownership. While I can appreciate this column for what it is, a kind of public-service announcement meets real estate moxy, how many people will stumble on this? Will the dude from Minnesota find this post or clipping from the paper?

Wouldn't acequias in the region be better served if property title codes or statutes were changed to protect the ditch and institution? This way local knowledge could be incorporated into title deeds. Or at least it lays the groundwork for better neighborly interactions if a purchaser has a heads-up.

I've mentioned this in passing to several organizations, including NMAA and NMAC reps, and it might be worth pursuing. If, for example, on the signing of a new deed to property in, say, Chama, there was a big fat warning on the deed itself about the acequia and the rights and responsibilities of the new owner.... wouldn't that be useful? This seems to be one minor, but significant, improvement that could be taken to let newcomers "in" on the secret of acequias and why they are worth preserving in New Mexico. I welcome comments.

Industry and water, in the land of water

2010-03-15T14:38:00.001-06:00

I have just returned from a fairly full week in Portland, Oregon, a veritable land of water compared to New Mexico and most of the Southwest of course. The trip was for the American Society for Environmental History meetings, and I was fairly disciplined about going to sessions for the first couple of days. The highlight, in educational terms, was the river-boat tour of the Willamette River on Wednesday, prior to the conference start.

For many who don't know the region or the Pacific Northwest well, and here I include myself, what was remarkable was the concentration and rich multi-layered effects of heavy industry on the river. Here, in Ecotopia as Joel Garreau once called the Northwest (Nine Nations of North America), it was pretty unexpected to see and hear about the heavy human use and footprint. Industry still crowds the river bank of the Willamette that is pretty startling; even new development in the city requires only a 25 foot setback from the river (which is nothing). And urban (runoff) environments are far harder on riparian ecosystems and aquatic organisms than cattle, which usually have a greater setback requirement in many regions. Some stretches made Albuquerque and Rio Rancho look positively "green" by comparison, though the kind of contamination that New Mexico will have to worry about is of the largely invisible (radiation) variety. Some 20-30 miles of the Willamette, however, are easily classified as Superfund sites according to EPA rules - not all have been declared, of course.

Still, spoil-banks, gravel mines, creosote industries, steel operations, boat manufacturing, they're all still present and mostly active along the banks of this one stretch of river in the Northwest. The irony here, at least for me, is that Portland (and the region) is so commonly portrayed as some kind of nirvana for sustainability. And the current practices certainly do reflect an earnest commitment to sustainable ideas - high density living, great mass transit (are you listening Colorado Springs!?), and a fantastic farm-to-table restaurant scene. I did get a day to drive south and southwest into Pinot Noir country, but not as far as Corvallis unfortunately so no real chance this time to talk to the Aquadoc (Michael Campana) at OSU. Maybe next time...

Big water, small water version 2.0 (quickpost)

2010-03-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

Today's post by John Fleck is worth reading - an update, or re-cap, on a plan to move water from the Fort Sumner area of northeastern New Mexico and pump it to Santa Fe. There's already a local version of this near Santa Fe, which I posted about long ago. Fascinating - let's call this the "big water" news of the year for the capital, or at least potential news. Folks along the lower Pecos River are not crazy about the idea, as is understandable. Colorado has already re-engineered its "natural" hydrology so much, it's tough to actually way what mountain trickle becomes the Arkansas or Colorado Rivers anymore.

The other update has to do with another transfer up in the Taos area, which you can read about in the Taos Daily News (probably in a couple of weeks) once a decision has been made. In the mean-time the commissioners have scheduled a meeting, this one found courtesy of the TVAA, with public notice posted below for those interested and able to attend:
The Acequia de Manuel Andres Trujillo Abajo and the Acequia de Juan Manuel Lucero Community Ditches will reconvene at a public meeting on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. at the Quail Ridge Taos Conference Room to make a decision on the Water Right Transfer application of Terrance Irion and Nikki J. Bryant.

It's really too bad that our eyes have equal-scale resolution, as it takes one micro-eyeball and one macro-eye to keep both eyes on the prize of water in the Southwest.

Does adjudication have its own environmental history?

2010-03-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

I am about to attend the 2010 meetings of the American Society for Environmental History in Portland, Oregon, this coming week (March 10-14). One notion that has seemed both appealing and perplexing is whether there is an environmental history to adjudication in New Mexico. Is this possible? Can a river basin lawsuit have its own environmental history and unintended consequences? What changes in land cover (vegetation, crops) and land use (residential, agricultural, etc..) are provoked by getting sued over water rights?

There are some fantastic water sessions at this year's ASEH whose theme is "currents of change." And I'll be torn three ways, between Southwest water content, East Asian water themes, and European water governance sessions.

One of the real, palpable, observations made in New Mexico on adjudication was how it provoked irrigators to be quite vigilant over their fields. This is old news to irrigators, of course, but nevertheless a good human equivalent to the so-called Hawthorne principle in experimental sciences (sort of): You cannot measure something without affecting that something in the process. Metering of flows, roughly translated, is a form of social policy - people change their behaviors. If farmers had fallowed, or not irrigated, a field intermittently, the presence of (or threat of) adjudication tended to favor aggressive irrigation tactics. Although this blog has already discussed how challenging it is to get a declaration of abandonment or forfeiture of water rights, it is nevertheless a real concern for parciantes and irrigators around the state who fear losing out on their water rights if they don't keep using their rights at least once every five years or so. There are statutes in place that do tie land and water together, but since water is also a commodity in the 1907 code, these have more to do with injury and impairment. So, an interesting hypothesis to test in the future is whether on-going adjudications actually increase water usage in a river basin because of the presence of field surveys, attorneys, hydrologists (etc).

Or as the ancient Egyptian farmers may have reasoned: "Quick, look busy, here comes the Pharaoh!"

(Figure 2 from Water Encyclopedia 2002, frieze depicting irrigators along the Nile River in Egypt)

Shill alert - On "Old Mexico" and cattle

2010-03-03T10:47:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This is a self-serving post as it discusses the release of my first book.
So, finally, Private Revolutions is due out this month. You can find it at the press site itself, of course, but also at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or Powell's too (usually a little cheaper at the first two).

The premise of this book is fairly simple, even if the years of work that went into it were not simple at all: Ranchers are not an amorphous body of rural evil-doers oppressing communal farmers and ranchers in Mexico. Aaron Bobrow-Strain has also made this argument for Chiapas, Mexico, in his own book. In fact, many "private" ranch owners are also still communal farmers and herders, contra the work of so much social science in Mexico (and Latin America in general). I also give some attention to the larger context of ranching, such as gender, economics, and the ecology and management of private ranches in northern Mexico (read: Sonora).

I'm happy it's out, and I have my advance copy which looks pretty good though I cannot bear to actually read it. The first word in the glossary, by the way, is....(drumroll)... "acequia."

So, first the land issues, and now the water...a logical progression in my mind. While I do not focus on water issues extensively in this book, it really could have been expanded into its own book outright, since ranchers in Sonora (MX) worry more about water for livestock than "feed" most of the time. And their groundwater tables have dropped precipitously in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, so their concerns really are not that different from fellow "ganaderos" in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California (etc). By the way, all of the royalties (up to $4K) are getting funneled back into my own institution (Colorado College) and the research division that generously supported this publication.

End of the hard sell.

Butte, Boyd, and the Lower Rio Grande (quick post)

2010-03-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

From Colorado Springs, this is a quick-post update on the Lower Rio Grande adjudication issues we've touched on here before - namely, the long-standing dispute over the Elephant Butte Dam (aka the Rio Grande Project). Of all my interviews, and interactions, during the last 7 months spent in New Mexico - this may have been the thorniest and the one topic where an interested party said they were "not able" to talk to me because of this pending litigation. The problem is that, even without a conversation from said source, people continue to write about it, talk about it. Fun stuff. Here's a story from the Rio Grande (NM) chapter of the Sierra Club on the LRG and the tangled mess of private, state, and federal interests involved. The great-grandson of Nathan Boyd, Scott, continues to pursue this in Gerald Valentine's court in southern New Mexico. The next date to watch: April 8, 2010 - the day the state of New Mexico has to make the feds an "offer of judgment" on how much water rights are held in Elephant Butte. Stay tuned!
A tip of the hat to SB and SS for providing this story, and the background associated with it. I miss New Mexico already...(Figure from NM Sierra Club chapter)

Seein' and fightin' like a State, quick post

2010-02-25T08:33:00.002-07:00

I cannot help but point out a story by Emily Green, ("the screw turns", Feb 24), about the administrative reversal in Nevada on the pumping plans, that were struck down a few weeks ago by the Nevada Supreme Court. ChanceofRain also provides more background here, on that original decision by the courts. Update: the Governor (NV) has promised not to protect the SNWA.* This simply underlines what I've been thinking for months - the "state" as some conceptual and abstract boogeyman does not exist, it is riddled with contradictions, and in this case it is the separation of powers (executive-judiciary) that are stake. The state does not "see" subjects as a single entity, the state simply uses different hands to make different decisions (sometimes blindly). I'm thinking of Devi, the Hindu Goddess, with multiple arms in this scenario. Maybe that's unfair to her (no blasphemy intended). *And it gets even more confusing when private interests (sure, read "capital") become involved in efforts that have to do with water governance -- check out Aquadoc's latest entry on the role of Intel in helping Sandia develop an Avatar-based water modeling program for the Middle Rio Grande.

So, who governs (theory: the executive)? Who makes the rules (theory: the legislature)? And who gets to interpret those rules for administration (theory: the judiciary)? Still confused? You should be.
* added 2.26.10 - epp

Domestic well hell, part 1

2010-02-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

On the 22nd, the Bounds case was heard in the New Mexico Court of Appeals. This case, based out of a dispute in southwestern New Mexico, has a fairy long track record now. You can see one take on this dispute, from 2008, courtesy of Aquadoc. The same source also put together a more recent update, prior to the hearing on the 22nd, with some helpful materials and links also (courtesy MC!). The plaintiffs have allegedly become a real thorn to both state-level agencies and to their neighbors as they try to enforce rigid prior appropriation enforcement, in this case for domestic well impairment effects. But in some ways, it forces the hand for both OSE domestic well directives and New Mexico counties to address the schizophrenic water policies that are everywhere a problem in the west. Frank Titus remarked on this back in 2005 (partial story link here). How can the left hand manage water resources, if the right hand is forced to issue permits without regard to third party effects? Tough one. [Read the 2008 decision here]. And the chronic, widespread groundwater pumping in New Mexico had already lowered water tables some 80 feet, even by the early 1980s (see Figure above).

Yet access to water across the west is not guaranteed, even if you're in need or just want a drink and you lost your canteen. Colorado water law certainly is not merciful to the water-needy or the traveler wanting to drink or raft on flowing water as this HCN story reminds us. Colorado still takes a rather baroque, Omar Shariff "that is my water" approach to this, unlike New Mexico statutes that recognize the traveler's access to water when in need. There are even penalties against land-owners who try to stop needy travelers from accessing water. Score 1 for NM.

Of course, water, power, and criminal behavior are strongly linked in the west. I won't exactly call it incest, since that line's been taken by Emily Green, but her post is another reminder that water misbehaviors come at all scales, in all sizes, and in many different forms. Whether it's the approval or denial process for domestic wells, or find enough paper rights for the latest nuclear plant effort, it's almost overwhelming to keep track of it all (which is why most of these aren't well known or widely discussed). Yet most media and pundit attention is focused on "big water" issues - dams, reservoirs, pipes, endangered species, and not on the everyday pumping that comes from a thousand straws stuck into the same milk-shake we all share.

Next time: budget crunches, old obligations, and new pipe dreams ("El Camino Unreal")

Blog policy change, v 2.0

2010-02-21T09:28:00.001-07:00

This will be only a brief "policy" note on blog interaction - I will no longer be letting "anonymous" folks vote or make comments - too much spam to deal with (2-3 a day), and I'd rather have real exchanges with people who aren't afraid of being identified. This should not be a big deal, considering I have no real "power" to do anything to anybody in New Mexico. So, that's it - no other news to report, but see last week's updated post on Taos (Death by a Thousand Straws) for an update, courtesy of the Taos News, on water transfers and acequias. And please visit Emily Green's brilliant and regular Sunday "best of" water stories, in her "week that was" feature.
- updated 3:29pm Sunday (2.21.10)

On Dams and darn fish...

2010-02-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

The latest on-line NYTimes story on the Klamath River settlement caught my eye this morning. This stands in sharp contrast to the other, on-going, soap-opera-like fish vs agriculture story in the American West: the delta smelt saga. John Fleck, Emily Green, and Michael Campana have all posted updates and fired broad-sides at the political tactics in California's smelt case. The esteemed senator from California (DiFi) was drawing analogies for the smelt with New Mexico's silvery minnow, in arguing for some in-flow exceptions (actually, exemptions). Few bought the comparison. Apparently, irrigation districts seem to have a longer (political) life-span than most dams, but that should come as no surprise. As I've said a few times before on these pages, it's not just about money, it's about votes. Dams don't vote - farmers do. And despite the court case name, fish don't sue people. But I do find this Klamath development a bit heartening after hearing of the troubles on the Klamath at the NM Water Dialogue in January from Reed Benson (UNM Law School). E.Green has also started drawing the logical link between salmon plans and the latest Feinstein blunder in Cali.

Philosophical aside: One troubling, perhaps glib, aspect of these "settlements" which should sound familiar to New Mexicans is the way that both "fish" and "Indians" are naturalized in this context. What I mean is that both are used as a foil in "federal reserve water" issues, whether it is a settlement on adjudication (Aamodt, Abeyta) or whether it comes down to a species restoration plan. Both scenarios, almost inevitably, mean hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent. As the old addage goes, "follow the money." Who benefits? These restoration and adjudication settlements have become their own industry, in process (let's employ hundreds of attorneys and engineers!) and in outcome (look, a new pipeline/dam/project is needed!).
Just look at the Times story, see that final tab for states - how easy will it be for a broken California financial system to (convince voters to) pay for this? I smell a special hydrostimulus package for many western states - we won't be calling these "earmarks" anymore. How about a "watermark?"

Coming soon: domestic well hell in New Mexico!

Taos? Death by a Thousand Straws...

2010-02-17T17:25:00.001-07:00

I attended yet another special hearing organized by an acequia commission last night, this time up in the Taos area. For those who saw the last post, this is the Pacheco Community ditch we're talking about, near Ranchos de Taos (south side of town). For residents in and near Taos, it's a familiar story; someone wants to move water away from the ditch for a domestic & sanitation district (essentially a domestic mutual, but bigger, and better funded). In this case, it's the El Valle Water and Sanitation District. Apparently, they have to acquire surface water rights on the order of some 160+af to off-set their groundwater pumping in the area, since the pumps affect all of the tributary drainages in the area.

In this particular hearing, a Mr. S------ from Questa, NM was asking for a water rights transfer to take place, so that El Valle could essentially 'retire' the surface right as they offset their pumping. They had not entered into a contract yet, but had at least spoken about it. No one from the Water district showed up, however, and part of this was the small potatoes, relatively speaking, of the water right: 0.625 acre feet. This does not sound like a lot of water on a ditch, and it's not really, but the problem is the calculated number. This was the number given to Mr. S from the OSE personnel in Santa Fe. Is that the whole, actual suface water right or only the consumptive use acreage? This latter aspect was fuzzy even to the applicant who had pursued the transfer.

The other fascinating aspect is that the right was not purchased; it was a payment-in-kind for a money loan to a local resident, Mr. T------- from nearby Ranchos de Taos. Mr. T could not pay back Mr. S, so he signed over the deed to the water rights. Several concerns were voiced at the meeting by commissioners and parciantes alike: a) What would the effect be of "retiring" this water from the ditch if OSE starts metering the Pacheco ditch? b) What effect would the El Valle pumps have on springs and seeps* that feed the ditch in question? c) Is the surface-to-groundater conversion rate (roughly 2 to 1) for water rights an accurate number to be using in such transfers? d) Is there no one else on the ditch who would be interested in acquiring the water right, so that water could stay on the Pacheco ditch?

That last question or option was thrown open as an attractive and viable alternative. So, will this be yet another case of a single drawn water straw in Taos' "death by a thousand straws?" The commissioners are due to render a decision by next Tuesday, February 23rd. But given the recent denial by another acequia commission for a much larger transfer to the El Valle folks a few weeks back, for which the acequia was sued, I'd say the applicant should start thinking about plan B: find a buyer on the existing ditch.
Post updated 2.20.10 (link to Taos News story)
* second photo is a seep in Chimayo, NM - illustrative example only

Pre-trip field note: Taos

2010-02-15T10:22:00.001-07:00

Yet another surface water transfer along an acequia is up for a decision by the ditch's commissioners. This time, it's in the Taos area - the Pacheco ditch. The hearing is set for 5 p.m. at the Juan I. Gonzales Taos County Agricultural Center, 202 Chamisa Road, which lies on the south side of Taos. The notice is posted here, as a .pdf, for the public hearing (TVAA link).

I've written about a few of these applications, notably the Chupadero case and the Cook case (Espanola), and so far it's been a challenge for transfer applicants to get approval by acequia commissioners. These new transfer by-law measures, if they have been adopted by ditch commissioners and parciantes, offer an added measure of protection from water transfers that do not fall under the purview of the OSE. Applicants must plead their case to the commission, and the burden of proof is on them to document that the transfer would not harm the other irrigators on the ditch. Of course, the commissioners cannot come off as fickle or glib in their decision-making, but it does put a burden of responsibility on them, too. Governance cuts both ways - added local powers call for and invoke some added degree of burden for commissioners.

All of the parciantes who show up get a voice, an opportunity to discuss impairment or "detriment" to the ditch, so it should be fun to watch. I'll also get a chance to catch up with some people up in Taos, including some water attorneys and parciantes. I will post an update on Wednesday or Thursday regarding the hearing.

Quick post: On the lifespan of dams

2010-02-14T10:40:00.001-07:00

There's an interesting piece in today's Albuquerque Journal, by John Fleck, on the life and (eventual) death of dams - this one happens to be about Elephant Butte in southern New Mexico. The challenge for EB is keeping the Rio Grande channelized enough so that water eventually reaches the actual reservoir, instead of spreading out in a typical distributary delta like so many others that occur around the world, when a river meets ultimate base level (the sea). Here, it's the constant battle between slope, sediment supply, and the currents of the river that dictate where the river struggles to make it to the dead pool of the dam. And unlike the Nile or the Mississippi deltas that are slowly disappearing, this inland Rio Grande near-delta actually re-forms every year. Given the amount of sediment thrown from semi-arid mountain landforms, it's no surprise that flood and sediment control are a major concern. Throw in impervious cover, and you speed up the work that water can actually do in carrying sediment long distances in New Mexico.

Marc Reisner has already written a scathing condemnation of the era of big dam building in the western United States, so this post won't add anything others don't already know. I simply find it a good reminder to remember that dams, like we mere mortals, also have a lifespan. I'll post another picture, here, of one of Santa Fe's "dead dams" as a reminder of this fact. In the game of rock-paper-scissors for dams, sediment always eventually wins over still fresh-water. Happy Valentine's Day.

(first photo, USFS, via John Fleck)

Water and the Nuclear Uncanny*

2010-02-11T11:20:00.001-07:00

I have admittedly spent most of my time this past year focused on water quantity, water rights, acequias, and adjudication. And, right or wrong, I have said little about actual water quality. A convergence of interesting quotes, newspapers stories, local activist influences, and a future course plan are making me reconsider how water quality is pertinent not only to this blog but to all New Mexicans.

Many of you know of the Buckman Diversion Project just northwest of Santa Fe, essentially a filtering bladder dam that parallels the channel of the Rio Grande, and that will allow up to some 5000 afy to be drawn for the city and county water supply once it comes on-line in 2011. This “new” wet water (love the redundancy of this term) is actually not new, however, in that the Buckman project is supposed to be a renewable water source for a non-renewable one – in essence, to replace the Buckman pumping field currently slurping into the nearby aquifer.

I was recently quoted, in some ways unknowingly, in the Santa Fe New Mexican as being rather unconcerned about water quality. Actually, it was about tap water contaminants, and whether or not people tend to reach for bottled water or just tap water, and I shouldn’t have been so naïve as to use the original bait tendered in the story that Staci Matlock was writing. I don’t “laugh off” concerns over water quality as I reach for “another cold one from the tap.” That language was actually in Staci’s Green Line blog post, as she requested some responses to her query about bottled versus tap water. And I came off as glib, especially since I had NOT read the fall 2009 report by the EWG on the local water in Santa Fe (cf Matlock 2010). My post-facto shame (verguenza!) was heightened as I reached out recently to Sheri Kotowski up in the Embudo Valley, who is focused on monitoring water quality in that watershed. For the record, I applaud this kind of citizen science, and I do not discount the concerns over radioactivity and the concerns of people who live near Los Alamos National Laboratories. After reading some books in the past few months (Kuletz 1998; Masco 2006) on the nuclear ecologies of New Mexico and the Southwest, I certainly understand these concerns. And these are not new – Will Graf (1994), a geomorphologist, wrote about Plutonium in the Rio Grande almost twenty years ago, and certainly the Buckman groundwaters have a healthy little dose of uranium in them according to the latest S.Fe water quality report found here (.pdf).

That the Buckman project will draw water opposite some of the drainage canyons that come out of Los Alamos has been cause for concern. The project has reportedly accounted for this, by promising to shut off the bladder intake when a run-off event (rain) occurs in the Los Alamos canyons that might bring radioactive nuclides into the Rio Grande. The graphic (left) shows the treatment process necessary for water drawn from the Rio Grande at the Buckman diversion dam. And there’s an on-going negotiation process, along with a general MOU (memorandum of agreement) between Buckman and LANL about this concern. This is a good plan but I can’t help but think of the old expression “no good deed goes unpunished.” This is a folksy way of referring to Murphy’s Law and maybe that’s too pessimistic. Then again, who would have predicted the absolute chaos, from a simple and nearby controlled burn earlier in this decade, of the Cerro Grande fire on the eastern slopes of the Jemez that took out several buildings in Los Alamos? Jake Kosek, fellow geographer, author of “Understories” wrote about the link between nuclear ecology in this part of New Mexico and forest livelihoods.

So like the forest fires earlier in this decade, water that comes in from the canyons of Los Alamos should be of concern to all communities downstream, whether you live in Albuquerque or in a rural setting along an acequia. I’ve never seen a radionuclide filter on a head-gate or point of diversion, and the water quality standards now being established and set by New Mexico’s First Nations may be one of the best hopes for ensuring some better norm for water quality in the Rio Grande.
As I wrap up this last month of interviews, field work, and archival dipping in New Mexico, the first course next fall is also on my mind. My usual advanced seminar, Southwest Studies/EnvScience 301, Political Ecology of the Southwest, awaits me in September. For the fall 2010 version of this course, I’m focusing on the Nuclear Borderlands (as I wrote some time ago). So I hope to bring together the nexus of concerns over land, forests, and water in a way that takes the military-industrial complex seriously, while also questioning our current policies designed to mitigate, adapt to, or avoid those risks. Like radioactivity, however, water flows through systems and landscapes. Like nuclear isotopes, water can be “contained” momentarily in a reservoir, but like the half-life of isotopes, water evaporates and escapes. Water, like radioactivity, transcends our typical governance approaches and exposes us all to the realities of a universe in flux. No, I'm not a philosopher (technically), though I'd like to play one on TV. Until next time...
* title of post is derived from Masco (2006: 27-28).

Is it all worth it?

2010-02-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

My latest poll (to the right) is a simple enough question: Should this blog die as I exit New Mexico at the end of February? Should I keep it going? Do I need more New Mexico focus? Is the comparative posting at all useful to people? Just thoughts on this Super Bowl Sunday -- oh, and Go Saints! Who dat bloggin' on water?!

Poll closing: threats to acequias

2010-02-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

OK - somewhat disappointing that only n=6 on the poll that just closed; on "what is the most immediate threat" to acequias, people were evently split on three of the four choices, and the only category that didn't get a single nod was bureaucracy. Water transfers, delinquent parciantes, and urban water demands were balanced in terms of any perception of imminent threat. And these are scaled aspects, one is internal (parciantes), one is slightly less local (transfer), while the last category of urban water is clearly exogenous - an external threat. Obviously, savvy readers can easily tie together the fact that many current or soon-to-be transfer applications are driven by urban water demands, and an ever-increasing demographic pressure on utilities to service those new demands. Witness population growth in the metro Santa Fe area (graph, from SFe Review). And this "urban" demand is usually, sometimes casually disguised as "suburban" demand. Adobe designs are not exactly a sore thumb on the landscape - thus making it harder to appreciate what the impacts really are in particular basins. Don't believe it? Drive between Tesuque and S.Fe and try counting roof-tops.
Thanks to those who took the poll; another will be up shortly. Keep in mind these are for novelty entertainment purposes only; with an n=6 and no systematic random sample, you should not take offense at either the questions, or the results. I'll leave these results up for another day or so, then move on. Saludos!

Alternatives to Active and/or Integrated Water Resource Management?

2010-02-03T18:11:00.001-07:00

Much has been made in New Mexico about the changes to water resource management since the statutes authorizing the OSE to pursue "active water resource management" were passed a few years ago. Depending on the basin, it's either been slightly controversial, or highly confrontational (according to people living in some of those basins).

This is a brief post to ask out loud, rhetorically, what are the alternatives to "active" management? How could the "active" bit of management be better "integrated" into the local scheme of water resource management plans? Here comes my advertising for a new on-line and better yet, FREE journal, Water Alternatives, and the current issue explores the various routes towards managing water in some integrated ways, with ideas from cases and areas around the world. It's worth a look, honest. The last issue was on hydraulic bureaucracies, something I touched on in one of my latest posts, and also worth a look. Again, the comparative approach, however frustrating to look at apples/oranges/bananas, is one of the few ways to gain insights and to learn from the real experiences of others. And I'm encouraged that so many societies, and so many colleagues here and abroad, are fighting against the expensive journal subscriptions by starting great on-line outlets like Water Alternatives. Another broader, and free, outlet not just focused on water is the Journal of Political Ecology. Check it out if you're bored with Twittering. - epp

The Urbanization of Western Waters...

2010-01-31T10:16:00.001-07:00

Consider this post an "interlude" on purely New Mexican affairs, as we spend some time thinking about urban water demands in the West. That's not entirely true, really, since it was recently announced that a desalination plant may appear on the horizon in northern Albuquerque to treat the vast reserve of brackish water lying under the surface. Who knows, Rio Rancho might be able to boast of the lowest "goiter" incidence rate in the United States if that water is salty enough (ha!).
The recent decision by the Nevada State Supreme Court came as a shocker to Las Vegas hydromogul Pat Mulroy. It was another reminder of how important the "urbanization of water" is across the Western United States. The setback for Las Vegas (NV) is notable; the groundwater piping would have extended far into the basins north of the city, and the demise of this system has also set back a possible deal with the state of Utah over water resources.

What cities in the West, especially those anywhere near the Colorado River Basin, are scrambling to do: get rural water in case a re-allocation of Colorado Compact water is impossible, or in the case of Colorado, if the compact is re-negotiated to be less favorable for the upper basin. So, with Vegas already bumping against the allocation it gets from the Colorado, about 300k afy, the groundwater pumping plan was to supplement this river water. In the latter case, Colorado, Front Range cities were lining up behind a plan to pump some water out of the Flaming Gorge section of the Green River and send it along a pipeline to the growing cities that face the plains. Whether my own fair city of Colorado Springs will sign on, since they haven't yet, has yet to be seen. The Springs has its own White Elephant water project to finish, the Southern Delivery System (pdf map), before it contemplates adding yet another crazy straw across the continental divide.

It's yet another reminder that water doesn't just flow uphill towards money, it flows uphill towards votes. But even millions of votes cannot overpower a change in the general location of the jetstream, as this story reports is possible, cave data now adding to the vast array of other paleoclimatological proxy data already out there; so let's hope that cities soon "choose" to adapt to such a scenario with better drought contingency plans. Certainly, the Romans figured out a decent system (video!) for urban water delivery, an aqueduct that didn't dry out. Food for pre-modern thought this morning...
(Thanks to EG, JF, and MC, fellow water bloggers for many of these).

Adjudication as "translating property"

2010-01-27T21:28:00.003-07:00

I had a great lunch yesterday with two well-placed people inside the Office of the State Engineer. Their interests are in law, and let us call them "Dick" and "Jane" for anonymity. And what I came away with, at least, was that adjudication is, in Maria Montoya’s language, a work of property translation. It is the state’s way of seeing and knowing what exists by way of water resources within its own boundaries. And before New Mexico can “see like a state” it has to “know” what is “out in” the state by way of rights to water. It’s a necessary (by law) first step to do priority administration in the state of New Mexico, under the doctrine of prior appropriation, even if “active management” of water is now allowed under state statute.

We covered a number of aspects over the two hours of discussion: what the latest settlement agreements (passed in the U.S. House) may mean for tackling other, on-going adjudications; the limitations of staffing to actually field-map, then convert these hydrographic surveys to cartography and digital geospatial coverage, not to mention the small number of attorneys actually working within the OSE. One can only imagine the horror (“the horror” to be read in a Marlon Brando voice) of being this state’s first engineer, with a staff of you (1), and being told to start adjudication as a process. Even if you hire an assistant, how long would it take you to map out every irrigated area, locate every well, and then compile those in comprehensive hydrographic surveys, and then ask the Attorney General to file for adjudication? – If you’re cringing, that’s the proper reaction.

And while I have frequently written about “bureaucrats, engineers, and technocrats” in these blog posts, it’s not like I am trying to be unfair, dismissive, or judgmental. I am a kind of bureaucrat as well. After all, most of us work within a bureaucracy of some sort. My own college has its own, and much larger, pecking order of hierarchies that can create institutional obstacles for the pursuit of higher education. All this is to say that I can now appreciate some of the personal and personality dimensions to adjudication as a process: the fickleness of the occasional, indecisive judge; when well-meaning special masters for water rights cases have to file report after report; when judges, special masters, or attorneys pass on in the middle of a case. People are, arguably, easily substituted in such a process. But are knowledgeable people ready to step in when this happens? [Usually not] In many ways, the latter is equivalent or at least analogous to when old mayordomos pass on, and a bunch of less informed parciantes then try to figure out how to manage the system and justify the system that is to be used on a ditch. Local knowledge transmission is a challenge regardless of whether it is about formal, legal, process (and content), or the unwritten “usos y costumbres” that los ancianos used to make sure everyone got their field, their garden, or their tiempo’s worth of water. And translating custom to a "number" that can be ascertained, and used, for water resource management is really what this is all about, in the end. Hydrologists, in other words, don't use the "tiempo" as their management or measurement unit (for better or for worse).
So my initial view, coming to New Mexico many months ago, of adjudication largely stands: it makes “formal” what has long been “informal” in terms of water rights. This doesn't mean diminishing the importance of local knowledge; "informal" can be a great thing. But just one speaks differently than one writes, so too has the bridge between oral traditions of water management and those that require "written rules" been problematic to cross. In the case of this state, the job of finding these rights has been the task of the OSE. In Colorado, water rights claimants must present themselves, and then document their claims in courts. So while I understand why people fear to get an adjudication packet from the OSE, and what the implications might be, you have to be found and recognized by the state before the state can affirm (or question) the right you claim. You're not working without a net, as help is available. My thanks go to “Dick and Jane” from OSE on helping this geographer understand a few of the subtleties and the many complexities of adjudication.

Chile, New Mexico, and water markets

2010-01-24T11:26:00.003-07:00

In the last post, I compared the country of Bolivia with the state of New Mexico and how both "state" entities recognized customary water traditions and rights in national or state statutes, respectively. Here, I want to reflect forwards, in imagining what New Mexico might anticipate or mitigate if free markets on water are aggressively pursued. Perhaps no better case exists on water privatization than the water policies of Chile; its reforms to water in 1981 are still a New World benchmark for pursuing a private pathway to water pricing and re-allocations. This comparative piece relies on several publications by Bauer (2004, 2005), Budds (2009), Shiveley (2001), and Swyngedouw (2009).

Under the thumb of General Pinochet, the country of Chile enacted aggressive free-market policies in the 1981 Water Code (1981). The code recognized not only that water rights were "private," but that the resource itself was a commodity ready for full marketization. The code has been both praised by Chicago-school neoclassical economists, or "Milt's boys," who had a heavy hand in designing Chile's economic policies (Valdes 1995), and damned by social equity water critics, and so provides an interesting paradigm for comparison. What is clear is the distinction between Chile and New Mexico. Whereas New Mexico's system and legal system for water management is driven by the need for management and policy, with markets somewhat active, the contrary is true for Chile (following Bauer 2005). In Chile, water markets drive such a laissez-faire policy in water resource management, that all of the science and policy follows in the wake of pricing and free-market exchanges. That said, Bauer (2004) has demonstrated that while private rights were affirmed, free-market water incentives were less successful in Chile's new water regime. Still, Hayek would have loved Chile's policies.

What Bauer and Budds (2009) make clear, however, is that Chile's restrictive emphasis on "markets and science" in water management have made it nearly impossible to implement a version of Integrated Water Resource Management. Bauer rightly emphasizes that the institutional framework of the 1981 water code cannot cope with the multiple conflicts, the multiple users, and the difficulties in managing a resource that goes beyond a simple market measure. He goes so far as to call the code "obsolete" in many ways (2004). And cautionary tales abound from Chile itself, on the dire consequences of this full-scale privatization push. What Budds adds to this is a focus on the use of science in supporting that free-market water policies: hydrological assessments reproduce the unequal social conditions that were created because of the 1981 water code. Modeling "what already exists" does little to improve equity considerations when new water groundwater projects affect existing users; the model cannot identify the problematic users since it is a strictly hydrological model that does not take into consideration the social or political context of a situation (see the map for the area of La Ligua, Chile). Both Budds and Swyngedouw (2009) are interested in using the term "hydrosocial cycle" to include the socio-political dimensions excluded from these narrow scientific and economic calculations of proper water resource management. Academics love this kind of jargon, but what it means is that water management and governance has to include the social and political aspects of water, not just "pricing" and not just "science." The conjoined arguments point out that water scarcity is more a direct result of governance than drought; the latter happens, but it is exacerbated when management is not open to questions of equity and access.

In New Mexico, the 1907 water code is not nearly so aggressive in its pursuit of markets as the 1981 Chilean code. Although state statue does recognize and entitle the OSE to pursue expedited water markets, these have been slow to form in comparison to Chile's experiences. One of the more fascinating analyses on water markets and water transfers was done by David Shiveley (Geography, U Montana). In his 2001 article, Shiveley performed a twenty (20) year analysis of water transfers in New Mexico, between 1975-95, with special focus on the population portions of the Rio Grande. What he found was an active market, albeit "incremental" in its pace and quantity of transfers, moving water out of rural areas (Taos, for example) to support the increased urban and suburban needs of Albuquerque, and the Santa Fe metro area. Shiveley's analysis also points out the vulnerability of water rights within the MRGCD when pre-1907 (vested) rights are moved out of the basin. Since MRGCD priority dates are from 1925 and after, only rights that pre-date the conservation district can be moved "out" of the basin and uphill towards money (as the expression goes). The current Board of the MRGCD is, of course, different from those of the past and has an eye on these agriculture-to-anything else transfers. And while water transfers have not stopped, there are occasions when a request for transfer has been blocked.

What can we learn from this? How can we wisely manage water resources, as a socio-physical product, and meet the needs of increased population growth? Look to the Mimbres River, where OSE is attempting to model a "real time" water transfer market for agriculturalists, in a hyper-arid basin. I've already commented on the heady mix of guts and arrogance this approach takes, of course provided by a UChicago economist, and this will be interesting to watch. If only hydrological models are used (as in Budds 2009 critique) to estimate flows, irrigation formulae, and allocation, it is bound to encounter the same difficulties as it did in Chile (third party effects, or "injury" to existing users, as we would phrase it). If Chile is a free-market water management model, is it one that this state should be pursuing? This post is not meant to single out the OSE as some purveyor of private water rights; there is, in fact, a globalizing market for water rights better exemplified by private firms (like this one). And there is utility in water markets where the system could easily be put in place, specifically where the perversion of (certain agricultural) subsidies can be appropriately challenged; you can find an interesting economist's take on this here. Simply put, this kind of comparative analysis can show parallels, differences, and openings for on-going dialog about what is best for all water users and concerned audiences.

Citations:
Bauer, C.J. 2004. Results of Chilean water markets: empirical research since 1990. Water Resources Research
_____. 2005. In the image of the market: the Chilean model of water resources management. International Journal of Water 3(2): 146-165.
Budds, J. 2009. Contested H2O: Science, policy and politics in water resources management in Chile. Geoforum 40(3): 418-430.
Shiveley, D. 2001. Water Right Reallocation in New Mexico's Rio Grande Basin, 1975-1995. Water Resources Development 17(3): 445-460.
Swyngedouw, E. 2009. The Political Economy and Political Ecology of the Hydro-Social Cycle. Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education 142: 56-60.
Valdes, J.G. 1995. Pinochet's Economists: The Chicago School in Chile. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
* please e-mail me for full versions of these articles if you want a copy and cannot obtain them by other means.

New Mexico, Bolivia, and customary water traditions

2010-01-21T11:30:00.004-07:00

A few days ago, I compared the interesting parallels (and differences) between New Mexico and the country of Spain. This time around, it's New Mexico and Bolivia; here I want to create an opening for analyzing how both entities (again, a state, and a State respectively) have recognized local, customary water traditions. As you will see and appreciate, there are strong material parallels between how irrigators in Bolivia operate and how acequias in New Mexico handle water management and governance. The differences, however, are just as fascinating and have largely to do with how the claims to water are wrapped around cultural identity.

My good colleague, Tom Perreault (Syracuse - Geography), wrote about the recent recognition in Bolivia of local "usos y costumbres" with special focus on the national irrigators' movement. Granted, that country has pursued an arguably anti-neoliberal path on water goverance in recent years, as Tom has suggested. But both Bolivia and New Mexico give special weight to local customs, management, and the institutions of local water governance in their respective settings.

By usos y costumbres, Perreault (2008, 835) is referring to the "mutually agreed-on norms of water rights and management practices that govern communal irrigation systems." For our sake, here in New Mexico, this aligns well with what acequias would understand to be local practice and tradition in both management and governance; so far, so good. Additionally, in Bolivia (p 835), these customs are "inherently communal, place-based, and variable in time and space." Check, check, and check for similarities to New Mexico's acequias. Finally, there are three basic tenets held by rural irrigators in Bolivia using traditional customary practices (p 839):

1. They are practices that are repeated, habitual, and regular (like acequias in NM).
2. They are based on thorough, intimate knowledge of the social and environmental context in which irrigation takes place (like acequias in NM, though changing*).
3. They are voluntary, mutually agreed-on, and accepted within a given social context (the members of the irrigation system), and not imposed by an external actor (like acequias, in most ways, but again changing in today's context*).
* Both "intimate knowledge" (2) and "mutually agreed upon" (3) are changing in the context of rural in-migration to New Mexico from outside of the state. Retirees, for example, from California will often have no knowledge of the ditch environment/institution, and may not agree with the long-time residents on the rules for operation.

source of map: http://www.idrc.ca/openebooks/112-4/img/wastewater_148_la_2488.jpg

These parallels should come as no surprise to those familiar with Spanish colonial land and water laws, autonomous irrigation ditches (world-wide), and places around the world influenced by Roman and Islamic water law and practices. In Bolivia, though, these traditional, customary practices gained national legal recognition with a 1994 Law of Popular Participation (p 839). Yet where the rhetoric of "usos y costumbres" turns materially different in our two cases of NM and BOL is on how this phrase is used as both a claim to water management recognized in law (somehow), and in its recitation for a claim to cultural identity and cultural rights. In Bolivia's case, it becomes not only a set of rules recognized as legal "fact," but also a set of cultural norms for being recognized as indigenous people with strong cultural rights to resources. For New Mexico, there are certainly parciantes who would claim the latter, and you can hear these claims in acequia meetings all over the state. In meetings and individual interviews with irrigators, I've heard the following:
a) "Somos gente de la tierra" (We are people of the land) - Mora
b) "Somos Indo-Hispanos, todos, y necesitamos agua y tierra para vivir" (We are Indo-Hispanos, all of us, and we need water and land to live) - Taos
c) "Agua para la tierra, sangre en mi venas" (Water for land, blood in my veins) - Chama
....the list could go on for pages!

And yet the cultural claims for "irrigation rights" in New Mexico are complicated, since the U.S. federal government recognizes only "Indians" and not "Indo-Hispanos" as indigenous populations and peoples of New Mexico (and the U.S. at large). At best, one could claim "Other" on the census in 2010, and then write it in. Additionally, the problem of identity in this state was further complicated because of the conflation between Mexican/NewMexican/Hispano/Mexicano/NuevoMexicano terminology. If identity is claimed, and self-identified, or ascribed, these vary widely and wildly throughout the state. The Indo(dash) strategy is simply the latest configuration of this in what Carl Wilmsen (2007) has called "racial triangulations" to environmental claims in the state. So, in this case, the Bolivian claims by rural (indigenous) irrigators serve both material (water) and cultural (identity) purposes. In New Mexico, the material governance of water is tangible and parallel, but cultural identity is complicated by the over-arching hierarchy for recognition of who is "indigenous" in the United States. And yet state statute (73-2-41) recognizes "Indian and non-Indian" co-management principles are in effect "based upon the customs heretofore practiced and recognized between the Indians and the non-Indians, by and between the governor of the Indian community or pueblo and the commissioners of such acequias in which the non-Indians may have acquired any such rights and, the governors of such Indians and the acequia commissioners shall also regulate the amount and manner of work to be done by the Indians and non-Indians in all such acequias in which all have water rights in accordance with such customs."

However, in both New Mexico and Bolivia, irrigators have "promoted the reinstitutionalization of water governance, calling for new organizational forms, norms, and standards." How? Bolivian campesinos got it done by getting national, legal, recognition of their uses and customs (as we've seen). In New Mexico, parciantes have successfully injected their long-practiced customary use and tradition to the legal negotations of adjudication suits. To use one example, perhaps the most notable in this state, the Abeyta settlement in the Taos Valley (map from Rodriguez 2007) uses language that acknowledges the standing agreements between Taos Pueblo and the acequias that share the waters with the Pueblo. In Section 8 of the 2006 agreement, on "surface water sharing," the Pueblo and the acequias have simply formalized (and reinstitutionalized) their long-standing agreements on water allocation, water timing and releases, and cooperation conventions for access to ditch maintenance. Is this a new organizational "form, norm, and standard?" It depends on what you mean by "new." Does it simply formalize what was already being done? Yes, and that's the case with the vast majority of arrangements when acequias undergo adjudication. But now this organizational cooperation, in both its format and the normative practices, may become (just like in Bolivia's case) a "legal fact" recognized in the settlement (it passed in the House, 1.20.10). --updated 1.21.10

So, in both cases, Bolivia in its national legal recognition, and New Mexico in the currently-phrased settlement agreements stemming from adjudication, rural water organizations were able to translate the locally-accepted "uses and customs" of water management and governance into "legal fact." And both Bolivia and New Mexico have given legal, cultural, and historic recognition to the importance of these rural irrigation ditches and associations. Civil society actors were important in both Bolivia and in New Mexico. But the recognition of cultural claims to water, stemming from these material recognitions, remain different. In a few days, I'll return to this comparative work with some notes on how the country of Chile set a precedent for water governance and new economic arrangements in the New World. - epp

Citations:
Perreault, T. 2008. “Custom and contradiction: Rural water governance and the politics of usos y costumbres in Bolivia's irrigators' movement.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(4): 834-854.

Rodriguez, S. 2007. Acequia: Water-sharing, sanctity, and place. Santa Fe: SAR Press.

Wilmsen, C. 2007. "Maintaining the environmental-racial order in northern New Mexico." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25(2):236-257.

Water in Spain and "New Spain"

2010-01-18T10:26:00.004-07:00

As I hinted a few days ago, there are some remarkable parallels between the historical geographies of water in the country ("State") of Spain and the state of New Mexico. I credit the information on Spain to a colleague in anthropology at McGill University (call him Ismael; no, really). See back a couple of posts but Ismael's "Modernizing mountain water" appears in the co-edited volume Water, Place, and Equity (MIT Press, 2008)*, and is focused on the transformation of Pyrenean water use and its governance, largely on the Spanish side. I have put in a coarse table to outline the parallels between Spain's legal history on water and those of New Mexico.

Table - NM by author, Spain from Vaccaro 2008 (230)
TIME LINE
                   New Mexico
Pre 1860     Kearney Code/little state meddling
1860-90      Territorial statutes; little enforcement
1890-1911  First earnest territorial, and state water codes
1911-1932  State Engineer's Office begins// large dams
1932-36      New Deal infrastructure/water projects
1939-1980  Dam expansion, irrigation projects, hydropower
1980-present Adjudication era, water transfer, urbanization of water
                   Spain
Pre 1860     Absence of public involvement
1860-90      Early leg. attempts by the liberal state
1890-1911 Water reaches central role in culture/politics
1911-1932 Institutionalization of management; first systematic projects
1932-36     Implementation and expansion with social emphasis
1939-1980 Irrigation, hydropower and development. Autocracy
1980-present New uses/priorities/old conflicts/democracy & legislation

There are obvious, and serious, differences between these eras of water management and policies but what strikes are the strong, corollary, parallels. The New Mexico water code of 1905 (later 1907 - .pdf) aligns nicely with Spain's 1905 Law of small irrigations works (though Spain's have changed of course - .pdf). Dam building was roughly in the same span of time, 1930s-1980s, though they started earlier in the U.S. on the federal end, and ended earlier than in Spain. Where the strongest match occurs is the scale of water governance, especially in the 1900-1930 phase, as water moves from the local domain of governance in NM and ESP, acequias, and becomes a "regional, institutionalized" realm of knowledge and governance control.

Key differences would have to include the timing, and scale (space), of "protected areas" in New Mexico and Spain. For NM, as a 'territory,' most of the protected areas were founded on the back of usurped land grants from the Spanish and Mexican periods. These were strategically founded during the period of early and aggressive dam-building projects in the territory (and state) of NM. In Spain, dams and extensive irrigation works came first, and only later in the last third of the 20th century was the push "on" to designate montane areas as "protected" as natural parks or national ones. In both cases, however, these protected areas were largely a transfer from a communal type of institution (land grants/communities, respectively) to "public ownership" (the state/the State, respectively). I'll leave you with a quote from Vaccaro (2008, 237) that illustrates the strong parallels between 1900-1960:

"The reasons for such acquisitions and expropriations were essentially the same throughout this extended period of time: to protect the watershed from erosion and foster scientifically regulated reforestation...The forest department had become entrenched with water policies by virtue of having the responsibility of protecting the watersheds from erosion."

So much like the designation of national forest preserves in the Jemez/Carson/S.Fe forests, for dam/sediment protection, so too Spain was thinking along the same lines.

Bottom line: Conservation, in the early 20th century, was also code for expropriation (of land/water) in both New Mexico and Spain. -epp
Next time: Bolivia and New Mexico?

*citation: Vaccaro, I. 2008. Modernizing mountain water. In Water, Place, & Equity, eds Whiteley, Ingram and Perry, pp. 225-248. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Postscript: NM Water Dialogue

2010-01-15T12:22:00.003-07:00

Yesterday's Water Dialogue meetings at the Pueblo Indian Cultural Center were maybe the best public forum I've attended this whole past year. In my previous post, I had voiced some doubt as to the purpose and openness of the meeting, and now I'm eating crow - a lot of crow.

After a keynote address by Helen Ingram, which warmed my heart, that explicitly addressed "place" and "politics" in water governance, the rest of the day was occupied with three separate panel sessions. Speakers were either quite brief, after explaining who they were, or quite long-winded if they had a lot of content to share. I don't begrudge either approach. Ingram's initial volley addressed most of the minor and major lows and highs that were part of the day's activities and discussion points.

On the panels, speakers included personnel from the Interstate Stream Commission (OSE), the UNM Law School, the Navajo Nation, Elephant Butte Irrigation District, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD), ranchers, the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (or ABCWUA, winner of the day's acronym soup prize), and a climatologist and an angler to round events out. Tellingly, those three panels all had the words "conflict" or "competing interest" in their working titles. So panelists were challenged with addressing current and conflicting priorities (1), water transfer conflicts (2), or future changes (3). While I will not recap all of the speakers, there were some notable highlights relevant to the topic of this blog.

In the first morning panel, all of the speakers correctly identified near and long-term challenges to water governance and management in New Mexico. Chief among these were "environmental flows," guaranteed minimum water levels to help non-humans, and the difficulties posed by the U.S. Endangered Species Act. I will admit that this concern has been less of a priority for me these past few months as the blog has addressed really the socio-economic, human, and legal-plural dimensions of adjudication. But I bristle at the continued binary logic (black-white; nature-culture; good-evil) that speakers, even legitimate geniuses, continue to use in everyday dialog. Water flows across and through landscapes, period. There is no such thing as a "human flow" or an "environmental flow" of water. It's water, period. Does "nature" (whatever it is, capital N or small n) have "rights" to water? Sure, but as Ingram would have surely critiqued, "in what context?" For example, in Islamic law and tradition, there was a "right of thirst" for both humans and livestock (non-humans in the language of the binary fans). This vein of mindless ecolospeak does little to help or clarify, and it certainly doesn't get us very far in addressing overall concerns regarding water. I think a far more useful perspective on this, rarely used when it comes to water (explicitly), is the literature on the human appropriation of nature. And like the net primary productivity (NPP) share used by humans, so too do we allocate a good share of water for ourselves. This water typically goes through landscapes (or "environments" if you like), through agroecosystems, rejoins natural flows of water (either surface or ground), and moves downstream (or underground) to the next appropriator, whether fish or human. But if you (yes, YOU) think you speak for nature, or have some exclusive claim to speak for fish, vegetation, or "the environment," get over yourself. We all do. Moving on...

But it fell to Janet Jarratt, the current Chair of the Board for the MRGCD, to call out "adjudication" as the number one issue that, for her, was both a near-term and long-term issue to address and finalize in the state of New Mexico. And then she rightly pointed out the lack of land-water connection when it came to planning, zoning, and managing both resources. Sadly, like colleges and universities that have splintered into dozens of disciplinary fields, the reality of municipalities is that specialists rarely plan or coordinate together - and that's both in the carrot (incentives) and the stick (command and control; regulations) of land-use planning. There was some spirited discussion in the first session (and later ones) regarding the allocation percentages and "consumption figures" to agriculture in the state. Sure, agriculture uses between 80-90% of water allocations in the Western states. But public understanding of water use (by agriculture) is confounded. What is "use" in this case? I would again like to point readers to the studies out of NMSU on hydrology along irrigation ditches (acequias) and how little actually is "lost water" to the atmosphere from ET (evapotranspiration). Bottom line: Even if the figures are off signficantly, at least 80% of all applied water to a field works its way back to the near-surface aquifer to the nearby stream. So, following simple principles of thermodynamics, and what we know of the hydrologic cycle, the water is not used or lost in perpetuity. It moves downstream to the next user or, on a short-term basis, is stored in the agricultural soils and surface aquifers to be released gradually over weeks and months. The latter is the only true form of water bank we can actually document biophysically.

In the second panel session, it was disappointing that members of the Cochiti Pueblo and NMAA (respectively) could not attend so the highlight (for our purposes) was the summary review by Gary Eslinger from the Elephan Butte Irrigation District in southern New Mexico. I've posted some material about the on-going Lower Rio Grande (LRG) adjudication and the complications in working out the state-federal negotiation on an offer of judgment, along with the difficulties of historial "takings" on this portion of the Rio Grande. But this was largely about how EBID had set up a special water users association (SWUA) to include the city of Las Cruces within the boundaries of the irrigation district. As a way to buffer instant water loss to the city, EBID offered to include parts of the buffer boundary between Las Cruces and the district, as long as the city was willing to be "a farmer" within the bounds of the EBID itself. It was a simple concept, sure to have been tedious and challenging in the negotiation of it, and it seemed to be working for the district and for future city plans.

Finally, the third panel session revolved around so-called future changes. To most people on the panel, this meant "climate change" or both climate and the ESA, though one presenter focused on "conservation" of water. One panelist, Reed Benson (UNM Law), discussed how the Klamath Basin negotiations from the 1990s collapsed because most parties were more interested in the status quo than actual, meaningful change. Species listings, under ESA, in the upper and the lower parts of the Klamath had triggered this process, and in the end, the Coho Salmon (among other species) were no better off. Dave Gutzler (climatologist, UNM) addressed the potential challenges of global climate change for New Mexico, drawing material from a 2008 publication in Science (Milly et al. 2008), and the IPCC AR4 (2007). He focused on the bottom line story, in terms of the consequences to water flows, the Rio Grande hydrograph (etc..), and certainly didn't do much to boost enthusiasm or optimism. It's the same problem I have faced in teaching this material at Colorado College, where even jaded undergraduate seniors can be overwhelmed by the seeming scale of the problem. While I am not a strict "climate skeptic" of the insane variety (a la "it's all a great conspiracy perpetuated by climate scientists, the illuminati, the Pope, etc.."), I do remain skeptical of how we can accurately model these data from past trends. But more about that in a later post. Jean Witherspoon, ex officio from ABCWUA, focused her PPoint on conservation measures that work on a residential/industrial scale. Yes, this means low-flow toilets, laser leveling, Xeriscaping initiatives, and the like. But as one commentator noted, by focusing on improvements at the per capita scale (150 gpd/person), we lost track of the important figure: total consumption by day, month and year as a net use figure (not by person). It's the total amount of water use that planners have to worry about, not the "per capita use" mantra, and that total figure is the arena of governance.

The Water Dialogue is a great public event, and I have only two concerns (still) with it: a) It was $30 (advance) or $40 at the door -- this excludes, or certainly dissuades, poorer residents from participating; that's IF they knew about it. b) Where are the acequias and Pueblos in these discussions? I can understand getting tired of the Dialogue, but disenfranchisment can happen in many ways, and lack of public awareness makes it easier for people to get the shaf--- I mean, short end of the stick. And just food for thought as it was a great event; it was well-organized, very well attended, and well moderated. - epp

Preview: New Mexico's 16th annual Water Dialogue

2010-01-13T13:34:00.001-07:00

As I get ready to attend the 16th annual statewide meeeting of the New Mexico Water Dialogue (sic), a quick look at the agenda of the event looks intriguing, even if these are largely about experts and agents involved with water resources talking to each other. For example, a "panel" that begins at 10, ends with a noon cut-off for "lunch." No question and answer session? Call me jaded after so many academic conferences where a small group is only addressing a small group (usually itself). We'll see -- participation is certainly not explicitly scheduled or listed so it'll be interesting if it's a repeat of the MRG Water Assembly I attended a few months ago, or some new beast. Pardon my skepticism. You can see the old topics from the MRG version along with some presentations here. But I hope it's a good meeting, since I'm not sure I'll have the stamina to attend the Buckman Diversion Project public meeting on water quality (= LANL connection) that follows tomorrow evening (14th).

But I am haunted by excerpts from a recent book volume "Water, Place, and Equity" that is co-edited by the keynote speaker at the Dialogue's meeting tomorrow, Helen Ingram. For water wonks everywhere, Helen's name is well known and she was one of the first, and most original, authors writing about the intersect between socio-economic concerns, equity, and access-power over water issues. You can see her full CV here, if you're interested. One of the contributors, a good colleague of mine named Margaret Wilder, to the volume argues that it is possible to have increased political voice and access without a commensurate increase in economic access to use any of that political voice. In Mexico, and more specifically Sonora, Wilder views the increasing number of watershed planning groups as positive in a strict "political voice" sense. That said, poorer water users do not get to 'translate' voice to direct political power, because of a lack of economic resources, in this new form of decentralized water management and planning. I cannot do her full argument justice here, but encourage readers to track down the work cited above.

Does this sound familiar to New Mexicans? Don't you have regional water plans for each part of the state? Are the guidelines and findings be used for an overall state water plan? Are they helpful, or unrealistic, to the OSE personnel who have to assemble their macroscale New Mexico water plan? Is it a way to offer simple participation without full management power over water resources? Yes, Mexico is not New Mexico and vice-versa, but comparative work is valuable as it allows for bananas to be called bananas, and oranges to be called oranges. There's great utility in this kind of (even simplistic) transboundary water analysis and synthesis. Soon, I'll post about how the New Mexican experience, and the Spanish national experience, compare, differ, and align on sometimes similar lines. Until then, festering in a large meeting hall...-epp

Larger map of the ISC regional water plan boundaries available at: http://www.ose.state.nm.us/GRAPHICS/Maps/ose_wtr_plng_reg08.pdf

Reforming the water adjudication process?

2010-01-10T11:46:00.001-07:00

Since this blog is still flying low under the radar, of most parciantes and water experts, it's no surprise that the hokey "poll" (top right of blog) has attracted so few responses. And to be clear, this was an experiment, this was not my personal or professional view (yet) about adjudication. But I've been thinking long and hard about the ajudication process (not as an outcome), and how some parts of it probably work fine (hydrographic survey, if it is recent, for example) and how other aspects are more problematic (legalese notices from OSE). So this is a first stab at thinking about possible solutions, reforms, or ideas. If you have your own, I would encourage anyone (!) reading this to post them under comments or to contact me personally. You can also read the official version, from the Administrative Office of the NM Supreme Court's perspective, of how reforms to adjudication could take place here.

1. Simplify the language of notice. Since all fields, professions, and people "speak in tongues" - make the first notices, such as offers of judgement (OOJ), much clearer. Anybody who has been adjudicated, or in the process right now, knows how complex legal language can be - it's like reading code, where only a limited number of people understand the sub-text. You have to admire the kind of language that can produce a document known as a "consent order," a lovely if commonly-used paradoxical convention. This was also a point made in a recent professional report out of the UNM Water Resources Program by L. Kryder (get the document in .pdf format here, it will take a while!). You can see a recent example, put out by the Colorado water courts, here (pdf) that simplifies some of the language for people undergoing adjudication (28pp).

2. Aggregate pre-adjudications by sub-basin, not just by posting individual notices. Please note that I am not arguing for bulk focus groups on their water rights. But set public meetings by basin, or better yet, sub-basin and irrigation ditches where everyone can get a chance to discuss their water rights, historical use, beneficial use (purposes), whether the survey is accurate etc in a public setting. Adjudication by mail, phone, and e-mail is problematic even if it is more practial and affordable. Yes, it's easier to 'divide and conquer' at an administrative level, if everyone is treated separately, but that's also the perception by irrigators (that they are being cleaved off, and put into adversarial positions). And effective water governance is best served by both efficiency and transparent equity, and if irrigators are slighted on either front (as commonly perceived and stated) then their willingness to help in governance is diminished. In a worst case scenario, this kind of live group adjudication (or pre-adjudication format) would facilitate the truly conflict-laden cases in parts of the state. There are, of course, many examples of this kind of effort already. But many have been done without a strict tie to the OSE and are done by good-minded educators or personnel at UNM, NMSU (etc...).

3. Allow default judgment study groups, by sub-basin. Here, what I am suggesting is that where large numbers of "default judgments" are handed out by OSE, especially when it's a zero-water right default, allow other members who do have rights to ascertain the validity of these claims. It is of course possible that forfeiture is the right course, if parciantes (or naive new owners) have not been irrigating for 5+ years and have been notified. But any severance of water rights along a ditch affects the entire ditch including any remaining irrigators. I discussed this in a previous post, and how attorneys for acequia organizations are largely unable (or discouraged from trying) to represent individuals not formally on the acequia membership rolls. Even a ball-park calculation of water rights severance from the ditch should be possible, to figure out how much of the canal's hydraulic head will be affected if the cumulative (default) rights are no longer allowed to enter the canal in the first place. Zero rights default judgments are, indeed, the equivalent to the 19th and early 20th century partition suits that broke apart the old Spanish and Mexican-era land grants. So these concerns are both empirically and historically valid.

4. Provide for statute-specific expertise, or at least background in water law by district judges = Create real water courts in New Mexico. In a previous post, I discussed how most states do not require Judges presiding in water rights adjudications to have a background in water law. And while I do not discount the informal networks of judges across state lines, or within a state, for communiation, it remains problematic when those same Judges must then appoint Special Masters (NM) or "Water Referees" (CO) to conduct some of the court's administrative business. So a month-long "workshop" would be a useful start, and the real challenge here would be the work-load of most judges - they'd have to clear the docket before engaging in this kind of educational work or training - by no means a small feat. This would, however, seem to be more pressing than a New Mexico Spaceport, and yet the state has dumped tens of millions of dollars into the latter enterprise. What's more pressing, actual needed water (adjudication) or flying crazy millionaires into space? Too late - the military-industrial complex takes priority in this state. Just look at the list of partners if you think this is some great conspiracy. But given the age of some of the hydrographic surveys undertaken by the OSE, this needs to happen, before all of this previous work is irrelevant or in need of constant updating.

These are just the first set of ideas, and certainly ones that have been expressed before (officially or unofficially) by others, and I look forward to hearing other suggestions, corrections, and counters based on the reality of the situation. - epp

A first pass at a research summary on acequias/adjudication

2010-01-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

This morning, I got the first shot at a public presentation, to an audience of ~16 people at the monthly meeting of the New Mexico Acequia Commission. I want to thank the out-going Chair of the NMAC, Ralph Vigil, for allowing me time to vent on this issue. It was simply, at this stage, a report on "what others have told me" about adjudication issues in/of acequias throughout the state. No disclaimer was needed, I hope, given the fact that it was so brief. There were some members of the OSE present, a few occasionally shaking heads, so it's clear that the story (like any) is only half-right at this stage. But it gave me the opportunity to see what works in the narrative, and what doesn't or needs serious improvement. I'm only doing a first-screen image insert here, since I cannot post the entire document until I'm satisfied that all errors are corrected. Gracias!

Is adjudication a pre-cursor to neoliberal water policies?

2010-01-07T14:45:00.001-07:00

I've been reading through an edited volume entitled "Neoliberal Environments" (Routledge, 2007) and one of the small contributions, a section foreward by Brennan and Theodore (2007, 153-154), lists some of the key ideas emerging from the literature on neoliberal governance. By neoliberalism, they really mean the latest phase in capitalism, so bear with me as we get a little jargon-rich. My point in listing these out here is that if you substitute the word "adjudication" for neoliberalism, it actually works well. I'm working on an article that argues that adjudication was necessary to have any kind of free-market implementation for water resources in New Mexico.*

So below I've listed these side by side, with a check if the substitution works, a check - if it is awkward or too soon to tell, and a check+ if the parallel is downright creepy. The list, please remember, is generated as a way of summarizing what social scientists, especially geographers, have said about neoliberalism.

1. Neoliberalism (adjudication) is a process. CHECK
2. Neoliberalism (adjudication) is articulated through contextually specific strategies. - In other words, neither neoliberalism nor adjudication exsist in a single, "pure" form. CHECK.
3. Neoliberalism (adjudication) hinges upon the active mobilization of state power. CHECK+
4. Neoliberalization (adjudication) generates path-dependent outcomes. Check - (remains to be seen in NM)
5. Neoliberalization (adjudication) is intensely contested. CHECK+
6. Neoliberalization (adjudication) exacerbates regulatory failure. Check - (remains to be seen, though there are signs that this will surely happen when agencies butt heads)
7. The project of neoliberalism (adjudication) continues to evolve. CHECK+ Adjudication has taken different flavors depending on the time period, the basin involved, the number of acequias per basin, and the development projects tied to the adjudication process (dams, canals).

* doesn't mean I like it!

Disclaimer: Please note that I am not calling adjudication a form of neoliberalism, just a necessary first step BEFORE neoliberal processes are carried out on water in New Mexico. Water, in other words, cannot be severed from the land over which it flows if owners/maps/tax records are not distinguishable to the requisite authority. It's that simple, or that complicated, depending on how you read this template of ideas. I'll surely get some feedback after I submit the larger article to the journal Geoforum. Pax.

Looking downstream for upstream effects

2010-01-03T11:14:00.001-07:00

As we enter 2010, my eyes are turned on the possible, or rather probable, effects of the Lower Rio Grande (LRG) adjudication (link to map author)and water monitoring/metering issues on the Rio Mimbres in southern New Mexico. While the LRG adjudication drags on, the interesting facet or monkey-wrench if you will is the pending case of the Elephant Butte Irrigation District. Nathan Boyd's great-grandson, Scott Boyd, has been in court over the last 15-20 years challenging the illegal foundations for federal reserve water rights in the EB dam, and what he says is the illegal taking of his great-grandfather's water rights and infrastructure. You can read more about some of these claims, with documentation, here. Why should this matter to parciantes on the middle or upper Rio Grande? Well, if the U.S. federal government never legally acquired (or had available, a different distinction) water rights, then all the storage in EB and Caballo is in question. When I spoke to Boyd on the phone, his plan should he be successful in court on this matter, was to establish a "giant water bank" for local irrigators and farmers, to either use directly (beneficial use) or to lease for income (for a small fortune, no doubt). Local farmers have already joined-in on Boyd's question, as Staci Matlock reported back in August. Judge Valentine, who presides over the LRG and the Boyd proceedings, has given the state and the feds until April 8, 2010 to come to some agreement. Stay tuned on developments - you can read the latest monthly inter se update from OSE here (.pdf)- I'll do my best to report them as I learn more about this situation, but you can read a further update courtesy of La Jicarita, here. And you can track the on-going filing of legal documents straight from OSE here.

On the Mimbres, I'm hoping to learn and hear directly from irrigators on the issue of so-called Active Water Resource Management, and the state's plans to implement a "model" plan that could be used elsewhere in New Mexico. I've already posted and shared local concerns from the Rio Gallinas on AWRM, and how metering and water "mastering" has led to some difficulties and misunderstandings, but since the Gallinas is not fully adjudicated the state's ability to manage water is slightly more challenging. It was during the Congreso de las Acequias that I met the Reeds, and where I first heard of some of the questionnable tactics used by OSE personnel to get people to sign metering agreements. It will be great to visit the basin, set on the northern fringes of the Chihuahuan Desert, and to see first-hand what is happening. Hopefully I'll also have a chance to meet some of the regional OSE personnel, to see what their management plans are for 2010. Plans for this week, on the 8th, include a quick presentation to the New Mexico Acequia Commission on some of my preliminary research. I'll report back, for sure, if anything is of interest. It should be a good way to organize my own thoughts, take corrections, and listen to what their concerns are about how this is presented or portrayed by a third party.

Until then, treading water....

Water, past and present

2009-12-27T13:12:00.001-07:00

As 2009 closes, I'm more than mid-way through this research stay in New Mexico focused on acequias and adjudication. A couple of recent posts from elsewhere caught my eye, one coming from Emily Green's excellent blog (ChanceofRain). This rather nostalgic, and halfway complete, post by a contributor on Spain's system of irrigation works and irrigation mentality was pretty interesting. As one critic noted, however, the post had it only partly right and I would also point to Glick's excellent work on water in Valencia for those wanting to track down the roots of Old World contributions to our New World variants. While the Romans had already put down an impressive hydraulic management template on the Iberian Peninsula, the Moors clearly added on, complemented existing features, and also introduced important institutional aspects of water management. It makes me want to track down the old norias (water wheels) once common in Spain and Portugal. Only a few in Mexico remain to this day.

This was all the result of re-considering how my fairly specific work on New Mexico compares to other water management institutions, whether the current OSE compares to colonial Egypt, current Australian efforts, or more historic battles of water in the Southwest. And I keep re-visiting Mitchell's excellent "Rule of Experts" (2002, UC Press) for insight on how technopolitics and rationality became co-mingled in Egyptian daily governance...but trying to keep my feet wet on water affairs here in New Mexican real time. More soon, but here's to the end of 2009, a strange year. And cheers to mayordomos, parciantes, and advocates around the state - salud!

Water judges, water masters, and qualifications...

2009-12-20T13:54:00.001-07:00

At the last meetings of the New Mexico Acequia Commission (in November), I was asked by several of the Board Members to inquire about the knowledge and background of water judges in my home state of Colorado. I wrote the following e-mail to the water court contact person, who then forwarded this to Judge Kuenhold who presides in the San Luis Valley (Water division 3, based in Alamosa, CO). Basically, this translates to the upper Rio Grande Basin in Colorado (see the map).

I attach below the questions I sent on to the "Dividing the Waters" project, which focuses on training and uniting water judges/attorneys to discuss interstate water issues, then I include the Judge's response. If New Mexicans are rightly concerned about "who rules" on water regulations, adjudication, and rules, it's no less disconcerting that there are no statutory requirements for actual water knowledge to be a Colorado water judge. Many have legal background related to water issues, but it is not a requirement. Please read on if this is of interest...

original e-mail sent 11/28/09:
"I am trying to acquire some basic information on the qualifications of water judges in Colorado (and elsewhere around the Western U.S.). I am currently engaged in water rights research here in New Mexico, while on sabbatical, even though I teach in Colorado. I am to appear before the New Mexico Acequia Commission in December (09) and have been asked by them what the standards are in Colorado; I must admit, I have no idea. These are the principal concerns:

What is the basis for being selected as a water judge in Colorado?

How much training and preparation does any single judge receive in water law, before being assigned to a state water court?

Are there requirements for on-going education/training/updates on law?

How do judges pick "water referees" in their districts and what are the qualifications for referees?

I appreciate any insight or answers, or if someone else is more appropriate, please feel free to forward this e-mail to the respected authority on this topic.
My very best, Eric Perramond"

And here's the response from Judge Kuenhold (my emphases in bold):

"Dear Eric,

Carolyn Brickey asked me to respond to your questions.

The appointment of water judges in Colorado is pursuant to statute.

The state has seven water divisions based upon the seven river basins. All matters pertaining to appropriation/change of tributary water rights are handled by the water courts in these divisions. As you may know, the 1969 Water Right Determination and Administration Act addresses all tributary water rights including ground water. Section 37-92-203(2) authorizes the chief justice to appoint water judges in each division selected from the district judges in that division. I have attached the list of current water judges as the chief justice has just reappointed them. Each water judge is also a chief judge for a judicial district within or overlapping the basin. Thus a water judge meet the qualifications of a district judge which include being a licensed attorney and having practiced five years. The selection of chief judges is really a reflection of experience and hopefully some experience with water as an attorney or as an alternate water judge or referee.

In addition to the seven water divisions for tributary water, Colorado has five ground water basins which address allocation of nontributary ground water under the Colorado Ground Water Management Act. All but one of these judges is also a chief judge and Judge Hartmann is both water judge for Division 1 and for Upper Crow Creek!

To address the question you sent Carolyn, I think I have partially answered the “experience” question. Specific water law experience is not a prerequisite nor is it assured by the process in the statute. The Dividing the Waters programs now under the umbrella of the National Judicial College are a partial response to the lack of formal training as well as an opportunity to share across state lines. The water judges and referees meet once a year in Colorado in conjunction with the annual judicial conference. There are no formal requirements for training or education in the law but it is safe to say the water judges understand the critical importance of water in our state and these cases are prioritized by statute as well as by the judges. As chief judges, the freeing of time for these cases is a matter in their own hands.

The 1969 act provides for the water judge to hire a referee subject to the approval of the State Engineer. Some referees have been engineers and others attorneys and retired water judges. During the years of general well adjudication following the 1969 Act, there was a great deal of field work while now it is more administrative and adjudicative. There is no consensus as to whom is better in this role but the trend is toward attorney-referees. Referees who are attorneys have generally practiced some water law. There is no training beyond the annual meeting and efforts to build working groups around our recent rule changes.
Your questions expose the weakness of our present situation. Since we have not had a judicial conference in 2009 and will not have one in 2010 due to financial crisis in Colorado, the situation would be worse than described but for the pretty constant exchanges of information by the judges and referees.

I would be happy to talk with you by phone if you would like to follow up on this email.

I know several of the water judges in New Mexico and I know that they also are general jurisdiction judges.

Judge Kuenhold
Chief Judge
12th Judicial District &
Water Division 3
702 4th Street
Alamosa, CO 81101"

Bottom Line: I think this is a good first step in my comparative interests on water law and adjudication procedures, but it certainly leaves a lot of room for doubt in the actual process. Sure, Colorado has been comparatively speedier in its pursuit of adjudication (since the code really didn't exist until 40 years ago, as compared to 100+ years as a directive to the New Mexico OSE), but it does not guarantee better "judgment" on water decisions. Thanks to Judge Kuenhold for sharing his views, and for answering the questions directly.

Happy holidays. EPP

El filo de agua; the line of water

2009-12-16T13:31:00.001-07:00

I've posted some good water-related blogs to your right of this post, including Aguanomics, WaterWired, ChanceofRain, and Staci Matock's blog. Only Staci is locally based here in northern New Mexico, but the others post quantitatively more material on a daily and weekly basis and they offer excellent comparative perspective on issues from other states. I was to appear and give a brief spiel on my research, and respond to a request about water judges (and their background) in Colorado, to the New Mexico Acequia Commission. With family in town, and research still afoot, I've asked for a pass this week to return in January 2010 when I know (more) about what I'm talking about...in the the mean-time, the posts here are going to get more literary and comparative based on my winter readings, and the return to the state archives in January and February of 2010. But much of my remaining travel will be about the compulsion (or is it need?) of water metering around the state, from Chama, to the Gallinas, to the Mimbres. The photo shows yours truly stalking the USGS water gauge on Tesuque Creek above Santa Fe (before diversions), and a new level of state meters, flumes, and gauges is being distributed state-wide to track water users and their consumption and allocation. All for now...happy holidays.

Chamita, San Gabriel, and the ghosts of old capitals

2009-12-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went out to Chamita, NM, for a visit with the Rundstroms. Ron and Pat have a third of an old long-lot with their own adobe house, and small guest-house for visitors. They're also fans of the old Spanish Aparejo packing system (donkey and mule-based), and had two live assistants on hand, Amiga and Freighter.

It was a wide-ranging discussion, mostly focused on interactions with the OSE and how priority dates get established, fixed, and yes...negotiated. I met their mayordomo, Eloy Garcia, at the Congreso in Santa Fe the previous week, so this was a follow-up visit to learn more about the site, the town, and their on-going process of adjudication. Since even earnest lawyers and counsel believe in negotiation, mediation, it's no wonder that ditch dates would seem... flexible. For engineers hiring free-lance historians, it's also no wonder that all they want is a single date, a year, a month, a day (if possible). And for historians who consult for OSE on priority dating of ditches, they are caught in a double-bind of knowledge: They know that Spanish colonization plans, the village template in other words, called for an immediate establishment of both acequia and church. But they also tend to work empirically. So if they cannot find an actual archival document that says 1598, but rather a paper that first mentions the acequia in 1724 (for example), then that is the date that gets advanced to the OSE as a proposed priority date. That Chamita is on the fringes of what was the old Spanish capital of San Gabriel (1598, until 1610 when it was moved to Santa Fe by Peralta or Montoya) creates an issue for current inhabitants. So, the short version of a long story: The OSE claims that the ditch was not used since the "capital" was moved to Santa Fe. I'm sure, by way of analogy, that Philadelphia would love to hear that it was "abandoned" when the U.S. capital was moved to Washington, D.C. But this is the form of logic used in adjudication: You honor and pay attention to the history that is convenient for your case. But even that history is a bit murky, as a recent piece by Marc Simmons illustrates.

History indurates in these adjudication proceedings, so it's not fair to say that New Mexicans live "in the past." Rather, the past comes back to live with them, and proving empirically that beneficial use continued throughout the four centuries has now been shifted to rural inhabitants. The lack of good archival research, and on-hand resources here in New Mexico, is also a notable problem. And it's not easy combing through old documents to reconstruct the intents or meanings of colonizers. Here's one example, from 1704, based on deVargas last will.

So let's use a worst-case scenario. It's late summer 1598, and Onate calls for the digging of the first acequia ditch at San Gabriel. We know he used auxiliary labor from nearby San Juan, but still, the ditch was dug. In 1680, Pope of Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo) coordinates the Pueblo Revolt, and force the Spanish and many Genizaros out of northern New Mexico, back to El Paso. We also know that when deVargas returned in 1692-93, those ditches were still being used by the Pueblo (everywhere). The ditches, unlike many of the churches, were left intact. The Pueblo continued to use the canals as a new form of hydraulic infrastructure. Only the faith-based structures had a rough time riding out the Pueblo revolt of 1680. So once settlers return to the area of Espanola, Chamita, Santa Cruz, they go back to using the acequia their ancestors and neighbors built and re-occupy the old site of San Gabriel. How do you "prove" beneficial use if the canal is in other hands for a while? The burden of proof is almost insurmountable, save for early mentions of the ditch building by Onate, and it is disingenuous of the OSE to expect communities to have colonial documents on hand to empirically prove this. If they hadn't, the community wouldn't be there.

We ended the day, after a wonderful meal, with a tour on the basic layout of the acequia itself, from its original diversion point off the Chama River, through the village, to the transboundary line between Chamita and Ohkay, to its final desague into the Rio Grande River, near the old bridge. This joint-use ditch, shared between Chamita and Ohkay Owingeh, is a perfect illustration of why the past is not just "history," but continues to inform relationships at the local level to this day, and adjudication brings out adversarial notions of historical occupation of sites. This form of historical-geographic territoriality is illustrated when Ohkay begins to deploy old toponymy, such as the Yungue sign near Country Road 56, reminding all who pass that "San Gabriel" is a thing and culture of the past, as they re-assert indigeneity with the re-naming process. I'll simply end with these questions: Who is Pueblo, and who is Spanish in Chamita or Ohkay? When two brothers, one claiming Ohkay identity, the other Hispano stockman, can stand in for each "side," the sharpness of cultural boundaries is blurred. And this highlights how ethnicity is claimed, contextual, and constantly morphing in New Mexico.

Adjudication, electronic resources, and context

2009-12-09T12:09:00.001-07:00

As I visit more basins across the state, examining adjudication and its impacts on local water governance, it occurs to me that a comparative post might be useful, at least for context. One of the more useful, but poorly known, websites I've found has to do with a centralized 'bank' of information on current water rights adjudications in New Mexico that can be found here. In the "Red River" section, only Cabresto Dam needs to be resolved, and the rest of that basin has been largely adjudicated. A map version of entered abstracts* (of rights) as a large file .pdf, exists on these adjudications at the OSE and can be downloaded here. The tabular version may be more helpful for those seeking a comparative status check, and you'll find that information at OSE here.

There's also good "local talent" on water knowledge in New Mexico, and two of my favorites are the Santa Fe Review (link to water issues), and Staci Matlock's blog on issues that range from conservation toilets, to Buckman Diversion, to tracking the progress [sic] of development in the urban areas of the state. You can also check out Staci's past blog here (last active in 2008, but some good older posts available). I've linked to the Buckman project in the past, but in case you missed it, it's here. Mind you, the Santa Fe bladder dam (aka Buckman) is tiny compared to Albuquerque's giant crazy straw of a system (slow loading site!) that can extract 20 times more water from the Rio Grande. I also found a decent term paper on groundwater and hydrogeology of the upper MRG area here, and although a bit dated, has some good citations and is a persistent reminder of how widely this information is now spread. And, as always, remember to check La Jicarita often for the latest in upstart, dark underbelly news when it relates to land and water. For actual "data" in quantitative form, the USGS maintains a good, interactive, and geospatial website with a live mapper feature for stream flow data. You can find that here; the OSE is not the only one tracking flow, but these are major streams, rather than the smaller acequia instrumentation going in now in 7 different basins.

I've taken a few, sometimes impolite and sarcastic swipes at the regional water groups, but they are still active and do some interesting activities. The Middle Rio Grande's "water assembly" is one of the more visible ones, well organized too, and you can continue to track their projects here. Since the beginning of this project, a few years old, I've been reading some excellent water blogs, like the rather economics-focused California-centric Zetland's Aguanomics, and Campana's WaterWired (a bit more wide-ranging, good on science, too). For a good comparative website, see also Emily Green's ChainceOfRain blog, which builds from two years of tracking water issues in the dry Western U.S. For a "deeper shade of green" on water issues, try Peter Gleick's blog and also the one maintained by ecologist John Matthews (needs some updates!).

To return to New Mexico, if you have not read or at least glanced at the NM Water Dialog documents from the Institute of Public Law at UNM, please do so (find it here). The transcripts are also fascinating, to see the regional differences (and similarities) of stakeholder perspectives shared by citizens in the state on how to reform the adjudication process. That adjudication didn't really "happen" physically in New Mexico between 1907 and 1967, some sixty years, is no surprise. Given a lack of resources, this was going to be a challenge anyway given the most complicated cultural overlap of disjunct water laws (Pueblo/Spain/Mex/US), it was only the plans for large dams and diversion projects that kick-started the adjudications in the upper basin of the Rio Grande forty years ago. You can find a good summary of the process, time-line, and aspects involved in claiming water rights here at the BLM overview site. Just note that their claim that the OSE has been adjudicating "since 1907" is a rather diplomatic nod...there was really no field staff in OSE until the 1950s and no discernible push until the mid-1960s.

From the road, all for now...
* corrected 1.27.10 - Thanks A.S.!

Congreso, day 2 and wrap-up

2009-12-05T17:26:00.004-07:00

The Congreso de las Acequias was formally held on Saturday morning, December 5th, out at the Santa Fe County Fairgrounds. It spilled a bit through lunch, which was (thankfully) a little less...Midwestern than the Friday banquet (no offense, I was born in Ohio, so I can say that about my people). Although Friday was a far busier day because of workshops, since the Saturday session is largely a closed loop ceremony for elections/resolutions, it was interesting to see some modifications occurring in the "regional" acequia structure. Instead of only representing the larger regional associations that are composed of several acequias, they are adding a "type 2" region that represents areas that are currently not included in the NMAA structure. So, now there are "type 1" regions, like the current Taos Valley assocation, the Rio Jemez association (etc.) but also smaller acequias more interspersed throughout the state (such as the Rio Hondo in southern New Mexico). Apart from sounding a bit like "types" of diabetes, I think this is a smart move for NMAA to complete. Whether that brings higher attendance and more buy-in from individual, much less regional, acequias...we'll have to see. But it's an encouraging to be more inclusive and not just have regional delegates, the latter really reflecting the state's agenda of adjudication. It is in their best interest to create larger umbrella structures so that even small acequias, unincorporated, can access policy-makers and start to voice their issues with an organization that can do something for them.

As a geographer, I'm fascinated of course in this whole "regionalization" exercise that NMAA is engaged in; again, the whole point of regional acequia delegations, at first, was to deal with adjudication costs and legal issues that were difficult to pay at the hyper-local level. Continuing to support local acequias, from the regional level, is critical throughout the process of adjudication. And most are doing well, by all accounts. There was some disagreement from attending parciantes, on a few regions where the "regional board" commissioners were not necessarily willing to share information with their smaller acequia brethren. Even in the Congreso, when minutes from last year's meeting were passed out, only the delegates (your name tag + blue ribbon) were allowed to have a copy. I get it - at an ecological level, to save paper is a good thing - but here, I'm troubled that this is an accidental secretive move. These organizations do not need to be as secretive about paperwork, that is largely public record, as the Pueblo are about their religious practices in kivas. This is not just my blustering or bland opinion, but a set of common views that have been gathered across numerous basins in the state. And, to be fair, the record-keeping workshop on Friday showed how useful this transparency can be not just for acequias dealing with taxation or the state, but with each other: Each ditch could share documents, especially when useful for others (water banking rules, governance on surface rights transfers, etc...).

Moving on...

The whole advantage of these gatherings is, as noted in the first post below on the Congreso, that everyone from around the state has a chance to compare (water) war stories about how they are dealing with intra-acequia, inter-acequia, and acequia-OSE disagreements, to use only three examples.
The morning session of the Congreso was dedicated to a panel session focused on infrastructure concerns for acequias. Panelists from the Soil and Water Conservation District (Peter Vigil-Taos), from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (Norman Vigil), Esteban Gomez (ISC, Board Chair), a stand-in for Senator Bingaman, and Vince Cordoba (Parciante/Commissioner, Puerto de Luna ditch near Santa Rosa) presented their thoughts on how to coordinate requests, keep paperwork moving along, and there were constant reminders that it's "on you" to hold the agencies responsible, to demand accountability, and consistency. Fine, but tell that to the water mandarins...I mean, "masters." Tell that to the Corps of Engineers, run by military officers. It's no wonder that many people are intimidated, and if not scared, or worse yet, ignored. Dealing with the acronym soup of state and federal agencies is, by all accounts, tiring and confusing to most small-scale irrigators. If there are Ombudsman programs for adjudication, then perhaps something similar could be tried for infrastructure needs on acequias?

I close with a simple photo of a great "priority date" cap, given to me by Don Eloy Garcia and the Runstroms, from Chamita, New Mexico. Chamita is the current day village of where the old (and first) capital of San Gabriel was located by Onate himself in 1598. They established the capital on an abandoned site: Yunque (aka Yungue) Pueblo.* Everyone who has read a single book on Spanish water policy and land settlement plans in the New World knows that the acequia was the first thing to be built in arid lands. It was a requirement to "prove up" a village and a new frontier (see Rivera's 1998 Acequia Culture book, page 4). Apparently, OSE is trying to declare the entire system as 'abandoned' since the capital was moved to Santa Fe in 1610 by de Peralta (or Montoya, still unclear). The logic, apparently followed at OSE, is that surely everyone must have moved and so the ditch was abandoned. Ridiculous. Some of the first documents testifying to Onate's activities are the digging of the ditch, of course with some local (= Yunque and San Juan Pueblo, Ohkay Ohwingeh today) help at San Gabriel. Just because the capital was moved, OSE, does not mean that the site was abandoned. If not used concurrently by Spanish settlers, even after moving the capital, San Juan would have made good and surely consistent use of this system, even in the 12-13 year period after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 before deVargas came storming back in during 1692-93. When deVargas returned, it was clear that sites that had been occupied by Spaniards, Mexicans, and Genizaros (Christianized Indians, a catch-all term), were still being used (=irrigated) and occupied by the Pueblo even during that period. Is that not beneficial use?
...end of rant.

The re-election of the current concilio members was fairly swift, rather uncontested, and brought about adjournment of the two-day Congreso activities. The workshops (previous post) were educational and worthwhile and sparked several interesting ideas that could help acequias survive and thrive in the long run...but more on that later. Bottom line:
Well done, NMAA, on organizing such a successful and educational event!!!
* correction 12.14.09

Congreso, day 1

2009-12-04T09:33:00.031-07:00

Day 1, Congreso de las Acequias, Santa Fe, NM
Today's activities at the 10th annual Congreso opened with some remarks by Paula Garcia of the NMAA, followed by a musical performance by a Mr. Roybal who led with a song entitled "Mayordomo." After a brief mingling period, what followed were a rotating set of concurrent workshop sessions. I chose to attend the following.

In the first session, on Water Metering and Masters, participants were led by David Benavides of New Mexico Legal Aid, William Gonzales from the Rio Gallinas Acequia Association (see previous post), and Johnny Reed from the Mimbres Valley (located in southwestern New Mexico). Benavides reviewed the statute language, focusing on what was and was not allowed in terms of water master appointments, but noted the great flexbility the OSE has built into the statute for their own management flexibility.

This was followed up by the two acequia reps who detailed how, in two separate cases, the water master(s) have dealt successively with parciantes in two different basins of New Mexico that are under the Active Water Resource Management rules (see the map). Antonio Gramsci, the noted and long-imprisoned Italian political theorist, would be proud of some of the OSE tactics used in both appointing masters and in trying to coax and coerce water metering (especially in the Mimbres). The kind of cultural-hydraulic hegemony that was attempted, and to a partial degree successful, was chilling to hear about from the Mimbres. Bullying, coercion, consent forms for metering - these are the attempts and strategies of more totalitarian states. When the OSE central gurus moved in to try and smooth over the situation last year, they re-titled their water "masters" as water "liaisons," but as soon as the top OSE staff were gone, the local appointees insisted they were still "masters" of the Mimbres. In similar fashion, this new technocratic approach to managing water is fully wedded to neo-liberal economic models, a la Chicago School, as this story from the Chicago (U) magazine illustrates. If you're not offended by the pharaonic language, and the ageist attitude of the expert cited here, you're not alive. On the Gallinas, a different form of manipulation has taken place with the master/metering process - control and access. Gonzales discussed the various masters that have been put in place, two former OSE officials nearing retirement, and the latest water master who was hired from the outside (but referred to himself as the "new sheriff in town"). Apart from flume and meter design, which remains problematic in all of the actively metered basins where acequias are present, what is notable about the Gallinas arrangement is the re-keying and new locks on central head-gates, once controlled by mayordomos and acequia commissioners, and now increasingly locked down by the water master. The control of water infrastructure is power.

The second session attended was about record-keeping, another reminder of how much more formalized and bureaucratic acequias have (had to) become in the last 20-30 years. A few parciantes/commissioners discussed their methods for record-keeping, with hand-written examples from the Rio Jemez, some basic accounting using Quicken, to more advanced Excel and Quicken spreadsheets for tracking expenses on capital improvement fund expenditures. I won't go into gorey details, other than to say the days of keeping papers in shoe-boxes is now a thing of the past. Gael Minton, from the Taos area (Talpa, to be precise), did mention that they want to start historical record-keeping as a way of keeping alive the traditions of the reparto de aguas (allocation of water) and at least a long-list of past mayordomos. While seemingly less important, the more I think about this, the more crucial it seems. What is being lost, or at least fading quickly, in living memory is the past knowledge of the ancianos. Did they manage by tarea (about two meters), or time of digging, for expended labor? When mayordomos served long period, was it because they were effective, or because no one else volunteered? How did they resolve disputes between neighbors on the ditch? With the 20th century Anglo leisure class invasion in New Mexico, this kind of living cultural memory is not typical, and both local acequias and (I would argue and suggest) regional associations have to get on this matter right now if acequias are to survive. An institution is only as successful as its living and active rules - as Elinor and Vincent Ostrom have long argued - and those rules have to be understood and agreed to by everyone on the ditch.

The final workshop attended was on conflict resolution. This was, as hinted at above, a matter of daily life and management by mayordomos and commissioners in the past. But again, because conflicts and misunderstandings are now more common for a variety of reasons, this is increasingly needed on most acequias. And while the session was meagerly attended compared to the other two, this is an area where the NMAA and the New Mexico Acequia Commission could (and probably should?) become more active. The key, as the session leaders Gonzales and Esther Garcia (Questa) discussed, is finding the root cause of conflict on the ditch or in the wider basin. Problems and conflicts may have no easy resolution, but third parties, ombudsman approaches, and an active ditch commission can go a long way towards identifying possible disaccords and then trying to find an acceptable remedy to all parties.

Then we had a nice break, before the banquet. The long meal, segmented and interspersed with acequia awards, videos/movies by the young Sembrando Semillas participants, and some Teatro de las Acequias skits, was great for discussing more localized news from around New Mexico. Although I will admit to having cringed when I saw that skits were in the mix, these were useful: They illustrated "real" or close to real events that had happened recently and dramatized how local decisions had been made. Most, not surprisingly, revolved around the selling, transfer, or use of water rights along acequias. Even if parciantes discuss aspects and challenges that sound similar, the details are always different, so it was worth it. It was disappointing not to see some past faces, who have passed (Priscilla Salazar Martinez, San Luis, CO), and those who were honored but could not make it (Juan Estevan Arellano, un saludo cordial!). Long-time legal counsel for parciantes, David Benavides, was also honored with an acequia advocate award (along with Arellano). Kudos Estevan and David! It was an interesting event, a great set of workshops, that preceded the actual congreso of regional acequia delegates that took place on the second day. More on that soon...but the first day was a great success.

When the (Rio) Gallinas come home to roost

2009-12-01T16:25:00.002-07:00

On Monday, I was given a substantial tour of the Rio Gallinas upper basin near Las Vegas, and also a courtesy visit to the Gallinas Canyon where several small, mostly depopulated villages are still located (Lourdes among them). William Gonzales, a retired veteran, works closely as a board member of the Rio Gallinas Acequia Association, took time out of his day to show this gabacho around the area. We discussed several items that had been addressed at the court hearings back in early November (see this post). Principal among these were the remand order, between the city of Las Vegas, acequias and the state engineer's office.

Like most quasi-urban areas of the Southwest, the town-cum-city of Las Vegas has struggled to maintain an agricultural greenbelt around its setting. That the Rio Gallinas cuts through town not only determines many of the acequia flow patterns east and west, but also is reflected in the local politics of the town. To hear the RGAA discussing upcoming elections, with the west side and east side of Las Vegas, sounded a bit like Westside Story.

Two important, but rather neglected, aspects of acequias were highlighted on Monday. First, and foremost, it is increasingly difficult to manage surface waters when parties keep changing affiliations and allegiances. Here, and only as one example, the story of the Gallinas Canal Company is instructive. They have re-formed themselves as an acequia, as opposed to a private irrigation company, but they have not joined the larger RGAA collective effort. Did they do this for strategic reasons? Is it, in fact, better to be an acequia than a private company with shareholders along a ditch? The associated, and complicated, factors that are attached to the Storrie Lake project are even more mind-numbing. At the time of my visit work on the century-old diversion structure, that takes water as the Gallinas comes out of its narrow canyon onto the plains, was being performed with some of the state monies available for metering efforts. The "real" river was being blocked off, and all of the Gallinas flow at the time was being dumped into the Storrie Canal, where it eventually ends in the reservoir. That Storrie project is a federal project but it also has private shareholders and agricultural representatives. Even though they are not the senior water right on the Gallinas, because of sheer numbers and the infrastructure, they are frequently consulted or advised by the local acequias on changes to the Gallinas.

The second aspect that was visible was...well, vandalism. I'm only going to include one shot of this evidence here in the blog, a bent headgate rod that took some obvious work, but this is another downside of more "urbanized" acequias. It's hard to blame it on anyone specific, but let's say that Las Vegas jovenes need some better hobbies. As we wandered through the Roundhouse Ditch diversion structure area, with its intake and OSE-installed water meter and flume, it was clear that local youngins were making use of the area as a paintball practice zone. Noticeable, too, is how high that sediment is in the river channel, and how low the over-lying bridge is. One good high flow event on the Gallinas and the bridge is history. But more on that later...

We wrapped the field tour with a drive down the Gallinas, moving beyond city limits, into the lower Gallinas canyon area, to go visit Mr. Gonzales' satellite house in Lourdes, a town of 0 that is still planted by locals who make the drive between fields and Las Vegas. That these towns, Lourdes, Chaperito, Concepcion, all lie now largley unpopulated is no surprise. There's no paved road, no electricity, although phone lines now reach to these places. Who will live without these modern conveniences? Still, you cannot deny the attraction of these towns with their old standing (or ruined) schoolhouses, adobe churches, and heirloom apple and pear orchards stretching out on the irrigated floodplain. The parallel to suitcase farming on the Great Plains, or private ranches in Mexico, was striking: satellite communities that serve agrarian needs with permanent houses in town. This is striking country; one that I'd never seen before and would encourage others to explore. It's also hard not to be impressed by a landscape that looks like Comanche country.

With some spare time on my hands in the afternoon, after a burger, I drove up the Rio Gallinas canyon on a day where snow still covered the shaded north slopes, to get a sense of the watershed. Draped in pines, nearly alone on a quiet road, and too narrow for much agriculture, it's a small catchment for what is a highly disputed water resource in town. And it drove home the principal problem the city of Las Vegas has, a lack fo water storage. With only 1000afy of storage on an annual basis, the city easily uses two to three times that amount. Demography has lapped water infrastructure in this small city, and there are no easy solutions that wouldn't spark a revolution among irrigators or conservationists. If Floyd Dominy was still alive, he might propose a quick concrete dam right where the Gallinas meets the plains, but that era of large dams seems to have passed now.

The last activity was a drop-in on the RGAA board meeting, where mostly acequia funding and ditch improvement funds are allocated and managed, and it's fascinating to see the difference in governance between lone acequia and regional acequia matters. They reflect their scale, to be blunt, so whereas a single acequia can discuss the removal of a tree for hours on end, the regional acequia groups are more concerned about basin-wide matters (adjudication, remand, funding). As well they should, since these regional acequia bodies were created to coincide with adjudication as a process.
This area has its hands full, but it seems like the on-going negotiations between acequias, the city, and the state may lead to a long-term solution after the collapse of the Pueblo Water Rights Doctrine. More on the Gallinas later, as I follow this process of active water metering, for now... I must read up and prepare for events at the Congreso de las Acequias coming this weekend.

Climate politics, resilience, and stale appropriation

2009-11-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

As the world's leading politicians are meeting, hoping to hammer out some piddling gesture towards solving climate change (as a contruct) by reducing emissions, this is simply a brief "poke in the eye" at prior appropriation. Happy Thanksgiving New Mexico! That we have the "first in time, first in right" attitude towards water, and apparently not much else, is simply ludicrous. And if the Western States hope to really enforce future "calls on water" by senior water rights holders, they're dreaming at this point. Even in Colorado, the state engineer...excuse me, State Engineer, can issue a "futile call" (scroll down to 'f') if trying to enforce a senior right will result in no water. Remember 2002? You would if you were in Colorado or New Mexico at the time; depending on the data you consult or the model you believe in, it may have been the dryest year in 300+ years. It made the early 1950s drought look cuddly for these two states, at least.

And a simple toast to the most flexible, humane, institution we have in New Mexico (and Colorado!): the acequia! Salud! If climate change does occur, who has the right-scaled institution to dole out water? Who will have the social capital to make logical choices about who gets water, when, and how much? That's right, acequias and their mayordomos. Unless some local OSE proxy, a water master, is in place. Then all bets are off if the mayordomo of mayordomos cannot clear up the mess. But maybe I'm being hasty. Still, today, I lift my glass to that resilient institution, the acequia. Prost!

Junta de Acequias and Land Grants, Rio Arriba-style

2009-11-21T17:03:00.064-07:00

Yesterday, Saturday, November 21st, I attended the umpteenth Junta de las Acequias y Mercedes. It was held in the Oñate Monument and Cultural Center in Alcalde, New Mexico. This event, organized by Rio Arriba County (Commissioners) and its Planning Department representatives, brings together parciantes and land grant commission members from around the state to discuss what might be politely termed the "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo" cultural hangover. To be clear, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo applied to all residents of New Mexico at the time of 'transfer' to the United States from Mexico. While Hispanos recite this Treaty like mantra, it's only recently that the Pueblos have started investigating what the Treaty meant and means for them currently (see Hopi case). And I mean this with all due respect - what's crucial to understand here is how imminent and current the land grants (not to mention acequia) issue is for residents of New Mexico of Hispano-Mexican descent. That they occupied a good portion of the state (see the map), and its best agricultural lands, is not lost on land grant heirs and descendants. As the 1879 map makes clear, however, the General Land Office and the later Court of Private Land Claims, severely reduced the size of these grants if they were awarded at all.

The morning sessions, first of all, were squarely focused on the acequias, sub-divided between "legal and scientific" and then the following "economic & social implications." The first panel included lawyers Connie Ode and Mary Humphrey from the Taos area (reporting on the Gavilan case re: Cook), similar to the Chupadero case we've written about, Ralph Vigil from the New Mexico Acequia Commission and their current concerns (see last post), and Steve Guldan (NMSU-Alcalde) who quickly ran through some of the hydrology research data on acequias already presented at the October Acequia Hydrology Symposium organized by NMSU that I discussed previously in this blog.

The second morning session (economic/social implications of acequias) included some 2007 Census data and cursory review and analysis by R. Edmund Gomez (NMSU-Alcalde) focused on Rio Arriba County. Then, Glenna Dean (former NM State Archaeologist) presented an interesting framework for possible protection of acequias from a historic preservation angle: the "traditional cultural property" designation the state uses to set-aside historically and culturally important properties. Normally, this would include historic buildings (which in the U.S. case means a pretty low bar, older than 50 years), and the first cases of these designations have largely focused on important places like Mt Taylor (important to several tribes in the state). This was an intriguing possibility for parciantes, if they are willing to engage with some paperwork and some hearings on the (traditional cultural) values of acequias and the water in them. It would, at the very least, add yet another bureaucratic state-level protection if anybody tried to engage in water transfers or brokering. If the water in the acequia is considered a vital "contributing factor" to the acequia's traditional cultural property, then there's a strong case to be made. Only 5 (five!?) acequias in the state have designations for historic recognition, but none of them have used the "traditional cultural property" route, seemingly, because they perceive or fear that doing so might mean they couldn't modify the system. Dean made clear that is not the case. And let us be blunt: if the (damn) Elephant Butte Dam can be registered on the National Register of Historic Places, then so can acequias that pre-date it by centuries. So, parciantes and commissioners, do not fear to enter the Matrix of government bureaucracy because you are already part of it! ["The Matrix is all around you..."] Use the Matrix to your advantage - build alliances, seek out a wider network for support, the keys to institutional survival and success. That session ended with some planning folks from Rio Arriba County, including one of the organizers Lucia Sanchez, and Mr. Boyle, while Alberto Baros preferred to stay out of the lime-light. They discussed the county's efforts to set-aside and create zoning rules (and land-use codes) that specified a percentage formula on agricultural lands so that residential development wouldn't eat up the irrigated acreage as is occurring elsewhere in the state.

Then things got interesting with a certain Mike Scarborough, apparently a former attorney (?) from the Espanola area and a native to that area, who presented on the GAO (Government Accountability Office) and its hearings and final report (2004) on the most recent round of discussions regarding the land grants in New Mexico ("Mercedes"). While using some of the original text of the GAO (2004) report, and previous vitriol from late 19th century and even 20th century politicians on the racial dynamics of New Mexico, he then argued that Teddy Roosevelt "stole" previous forested area land grants (like Chama, Petaca, Valdez) to protect the future Elephant Butte Dam site from sedimentation. That forests, such as the one in the Jemez, were seen as vital to watersheds is nothing new; engineers a century ago knew that dams have a life-span to them and were not infinite creations. Just visit the Santa Fe relics, like Two Mile Dam (photo), now part of a nature reserve, to get a sense of how fleeting formal reservoirs can be. Intriguing - but unproven? I'd like to see this in print with a real history journal soon, to see if it passes muster with other historians of the period. Of course the GAO white-wash was fairly lambasted by land grant activists and scholars of the period, and rightly so. The solutions would be tricky, depending on the specific circumstances and current land tenure mosaic of the former land grants, but they could be done. And land grant organizers are busy trying to get ready for that possible day, if and when state and federal officials are willing to recognize this history of viol...err..theft.

I don't doubt Scarborough's material and findings, but he was getting a bit coy with the interpretive aspects of cartography, mapping dates, and designation dates for protection which can be notoriously difficult to do. Yes, maps lie as Mark Monmonier argued long ago, but they also carry power relations as Harvey also argued long ago. But Scarborough really didn't detail how the theft occurred, and if you're interested, I'd recommend the excellent work of David Correia, fellow geographer who carefully reconstructed the details for one of these (Petaca) and how the claims proceeded to divvy up former land grants. You can also listen to his (mp3 format) audio clip on land grants in Tierra Amarilla here. No doubt this was, for Hispanos, the darkest of eras as community property slipped away at the hands of both surveyors and the Santa Fe Ring. The Ring, for those who have not heard of it, was headed by the infamous Thomas Catron.

Suitably, the next speakers revolved around the partial legal victory of the La Sierra (Sangre de Cristo land grant) communal property owners in San Luis, Colorado (and surrounding villages). Shirley Otero, from the SdeG Land Grant, presented a bristling overview of the recent legal fight between the heirs of the grant (100+ plaintiffs) and Jack Taylor, a land-owner from North Carolina. She brought it through the period of legal wrangling and land flipping, as Taylor sold to Lou Pai (fromer ENRON executive) and then Pai sold it to two new owners (two families). Mike deBonis (Forest Guild) then tag-teamed with Shirley to discuss the forestry management land-use plan for the land grant, to prioritize areas for the community's use. The process of identifying land grant heirs is on-going, with the community and county collaborating to track people down. These people then have key assignments for the gates to get onto this new hybrid of communal-private lands. The heirs can do some wood collection, grazing, and now have access. But they are restricted on plant collection, an odd "partial" victory for the former ejidatarios of the Sangre de Cristo grant. Tijerina (yes, that Tijerina) told Shirley that the La Sierra decision, now established in the Colorado State Supreme Court, is the first sign of total victory on the land grants issue. This may be optimistic, but an interesting perspective, since "precedent" is so important to U.S. jurisprudence. More needs to be on land grants research, and there are numerous places to start, like the Southwest Research collection at UNM (to name but one example). And it was yet another reminder that the San Luis Valley, in Colorado, really should be part of the Rio Arriba region given their overlapping land grant history (see map by Baumann).

The afternoon closed with a flurry overview by Juan Sanchez, from the Chilili Land Grant (read a bit more about all this here). Juan gave an overview of the Governor's Commission on Mercedes, and also the upcoming meetings in December for the Land Grant Committee. This is separate from the committee established by the legislature. He gave a wide-ranging, and highly detailed, presentation on the range of challenges and property regime challenges (such as what "hijuela" means for different land grant heirs). All in all, a really interesting day, even if it was a bit poorly attended. Most of the participant at this junta were, to be diplomatic, "mature." It illustrated how critical continuing, and earlier, education will be to keep these issues at the forefront and active for the next generation. And hopefully, the advertising and outreach for the next junta will be a bit more widespread. As it was, I only learned about it on Friday at the Acequia Commission meetings. Thanks again to Alberto Baros, Lucia Sanchez, and to Alfredo Montoya (Rio Arriba County Commissioner in attendance) for a great acequia-Mercedes conference.

Acequias, meet your commission

2009-11-20T16:27:00.006-07:00

One of the most fascinating aspects about acequias in New Mexico is the apparent "division of labor" for these ditches and institutions. This morning, I attended the latest meeting of the New Mexico Acequia Commission, a body of representative appointed by the Governor of the state. It is currently chaired by Ralph Vigil, also an employee of the New Mexico Acequia Association. There's no accident here, as Ralph himself made clear, since the Commission (a government body) used to get its budget indirectly through the NMAA, as part of the latter's state funding specified carving out a chunk from its governance for the Acequia Commission's use. The NMAA is a non-profit, not a state agency. So, no wonder sometimes people are confused about who does what, in what capacity, and for whom.

The main "action item" on the agenda for this morning would be predictable for most state employees in the current economy: budget cuts, and budget freezes. In this case, the real concern was the freezing of capital improvement funds for acequia projects and basic infrastructure maintenance. The money that funnels through the state, then to the Department of Agriculture (Acequia Community Ditch Fund), are then prioritized for distribution (both quantity and order) by someone at the department of agriculture, a member of the ISC and a member of the commission. While this can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, these are largely spread across the state, though the bulk of it finds its way to the real clusters of acequias in northern New Mexico. Even the commission's budget is not spared, already having been reduced by some 46% from 2008 to 2009, and another possible 5% cut during this fiscal year (thought it's not guaranteed) and the modest allowance for per diem and travel expenses might last through June 2010 when the budget year ends.

Perhaps even more intriguing was the presence of some parciantes from Chimayo on the Espinoza Ditch -- a few property owners along the tail end of the ditch, the desague in New Mexico acequia-speak, are and have long been affected by a serious erosion problem as an arroyo has been channeled into the outlet tail. The result of which is serious erosion of their actual property bordering on the end of the ditch. Apparently, it has become a proverbial "pass-the-buck" situation, and the commission was asked to intervene and perhaps provide some form of conflict resolution. The room certainly quieted when one of the affected owners simply asked "Who is liable for the loss of my land?" [I could almost hear the distant flap of lawyers overhead]. Two members of the commission agreed to step forward and try to work with the ditch commissioners, along with the NM Department of Transportation, to seek a solution to the problem. NMDoT is also responsible for many acequia/culvert/drainage problems up in the Taos Valley, so it would not surprise me if the state road 76 crossing (and one of its plugged culverts) was responsible for at least part of this problem. The intersection of these overlapping "spatial" administrative problems is usually where problems occur for acequias, whether they be in rural Embudo or in urban Albuquerque. Clearly, the acequia does not have the permanent funding to solve the situation described above, and apparently not much good will at this point. So where does the buck stop in such situations? Ask the poor people on the Spring Ditch up in Taos for another disappointing example of treating an acequia like a drainage ditch (near a road).

Most of the members on the commission, logically, are current parciantes, former mayordomos, who have long been involved in trying to secure and defend rural water. In the latest episode of "who's trying to steal your water democracy?" the US Forest Service has started to ask parciantes on ditches located in FS lands for extended impact studies (EIS) for any work at their channel and diversion points. So communities first lost access to land grants, their community grazing and forest lands, now the forest service is trying to add insult to injury by making it more difficult to access head-water acequia areas for basic work? Why? And yet acequias are given special dispensation and have easement rights to either side of the acequia and their beginning point. Progress had been made this last year to get acequias some "waivers" on the studies and funds needed to provide these impact studies, but in 2010, it may start all over again. Some representatives of state and federal legislators were present this morning and made it clear they were interested in seeking a permanent legislative solution to this new "Floresta" intrusion on local water managment. And it is quite likely that acequias will have to think long and hard about their diversion points and impoundment strategies if climate projections for the state hold true. There are some interesting opportunities out there for students to learn more about the future challenges in a dry state.

This is not an exhaustive list but it should give you an idea of the kind of work that the New Mexico Acequia Commission does, and its interesting position within the DFA (Department of Finance and Administration) as an officially recognized state government body. There is no permanent space, or permanent staffing, but they do meet monthly usually within the DFA offices in the Bataan Building in the south Capitol complex. Currently working in cooperation with the relatively better funded NMAA, and its clear notion of helping acequias directly, and the state of the Office of the State Engineer (see last post), the Acequia Commission has to tread interesting waters with a small budget, little time, and a single monthly meeting (for now). Suerte!
*corrected 11.20.09 - 7:57 p.m.

Thinking like a (State) Engineer

2009-11-16T18:20:00.001-07:00

Just returned from a long and fruitful discussion with New Mexico's State Engineer, John D'Antonio, and his OSE associate and Acequia Liaison, Hilario Rubio. It is always easier to write theoretically, and in diatribe mode, as a social scientist when state "officials" are depersonalized (as is common). Among the topics discussed: acequia responses to adjudication (multiple and regionally variable), Active Water Resource Management and its continuing legal and administrative challenges across the state, the Mimbres River, the Mora Valley, and areas that have been adjudicated (Red River, Mimbres), are in the process of being adjudicated (Pojoaque Valley, Taos Valley, Chama), or where adjudication has not even begun (Middle Rio Grande).

They have my sympathy in trying to actively manage water resources in an arid state with essentially three operational sets of water law in place: federal and Pueblo reserve rights, Spanish and Mexican arrangements for water-sharing (repartamiento), and U.S. prior appropriation followed by the state of New Mexico itself. If the first (fed/Pueblo) instance continues to pose problems, and occasional nightmares for other parties, the latter two are finding a strange instance of fusion in some of the Active Water Resource Management rules and regulations. For instance, in the Mimbres, the OSE is actually trying to encourage shortage-sharing "repartamiento" rules along the river. This is happening even when a senior water rights holder is insisting that the OSE enforce "priority administration" rules, according to the letter of the law. So accommodation is possible and is occurring both there and in places like the Rio Gallinas in the Las Vegas (NM) area.

With twelve (12) active adjudications occurring across widespread areas, and with limited staffing to both do the legal paperwork and the necessary fieldwork for hydrographic surveys, the OSE is clearly at the limits of being able to tackle further work. And what currently troubles, the Lower Rio Grande adjudication and all of its compact implications, is probably minor in comparison to the white elephant that looms ahead, the Middle Rio Grande and trying to figure a scheme to fully adjudicate that portion of the river. D'Antonio discussed the office's use of "licensing" (basically the last step in getting water permits from OSE) as a way to pre-file important information necessary that would later be used in adjudicating individual water rights claims. Licensing, put simply, greases the skids for the more complex matter of adjudication later on.
While Elephant Butte dam and its accompanying irrigation district (EBID) was discussed in quick and cursory fashion, we didn't address aspects of ecological flow requirements in the river, such as the minimum flows and artificial habitats that the endangered silvery minnow is engendering along the Middle Rio Grande. That nonAnimals (as the singer Andrew Bird might call them) cannot express their rage, usually, shouldn't mean a total lack of protection. Ethically, we're in trouble when you need an "Agency" (in the Weberian sense) to stand-in for nonhuman "agency." And doing otherwise makes you suspect, or simply satirical. But back to the OSE itself...

Mr. Rubio, as an official employee of OSE, works as an afore-mentioned acequia liaison for the office. He admitted that this state role is office viewed as adversarial by other parties speaking on behalf of acequias around the state. I hope to speak to both again, in the future, since we had more questions on our mind than answers at the end of 90 minutes.

Adjudication and public outreach

2009-11-15T11:59:00.002-07:00

One of the central concerns of the State Engineer, and of the Utton Transboundary Resource Center (at UNM), is the public image and message of the on-going adjudication process. People tend to react negatively when they receive any kind of legal document, and it's no wonder that so many don't respond to initial offers of judgment or consent orders, so the "back end" work on this is time-consuming. Just look at the map to see the number of in-process adjudications, and this figures does not include the real beast that has yet to start, the Middle Rio Grande. I've written about Darcy Bushnell's efforts already at the Utton Center and her role in the Ombudsman Program. One of her central challenges is to facilitate public understanding of adjudication and I think this video in English and Spanish does a good job in explaining the process.
Adjudication reform is also under discussion, because of the conflicts generated within and because of adjudication as a process, and several groups are involved in either pushing for or facilitating a reform of some kind. What would a 'reformed' adjudication look like? Perhaps more negotiation and up-front contact by OSE personnel, or in person contact, rather than a legal packet that is often ignored for months on end. In my previous post, I made it clear that a lot of time and effort is spent sending out notices, but how much of this could be accelerated and made more informal? Because of the state mandate for doing general stream adjudications, and some cascading legal problems, this will be a difficult challenge. But certainly, some basic conflict resolution tools can come in handy. If you've never seen the materials put out by the Utton Center, now is the time especially if you are being adjudicated.

How the West was Won (by some), Las Vegas-style

2009-11-13T14:23:00.003-07:00

I sat in on two court meetings, overseen by a Special Master for the Pecos River (adjudications) this morning, the first on the shortage-sharing agreements in the larger Las Vegas area, the second on the Pecos River adjudication itself. Sharing a "shortage" may seem like negative accounting to some, but it has a long and rich customary history in New Mexico. I will try not to be wordy, which is difficult when you have to explain concepts like "legal threshold" (great euphemism), but it was both a dull and interesting moment to observe. These proceedings can inherently be dull because it is a discussion, most of the time, about agreements already entered into, a kind of status check so that the Special Master can observe if on-going negotiations and settlements between parties (say, Las Vegas and the regional acequias) are having their desired effect, hopefully a long-term settlement.

Part A of the proceedings this morning was really about the now remanded Pueblo Water Rights Doctrine, first decided in 1958 that gave cities/municipalities wide powers to acquire and condemn water rights within and around city limits, but the Supreme Court (in 2004) overturned the preceding opinion and handed back to the district courts to solve (a "remand" in legalese). What this means is that Las Vegas took water, as much as deemed necessary, from the river at their leisure during this 50 year period of "pueblo" hegemony in assuming water rights to the Gallinas. So representatives from the City of Las Vegas, the State (Engineer's Office), and the RGAA (Rio Gallinas Acequia Association, Romero Ditch, etc..) and acequia lawyers were present for the first part. They shared a draft of the 2009 MOU (memorandum of understanding) between all the parties and the 2009 shortage-sharing schedule for water rotation.

Part B was about the on-going upper watershed of the Pecos River adjudications, now centered especially on the Rio Gallinas. When the proceedings for the Pecos started decades ago, the priority (for adjudication, not "prior appropriation") was getting a compact signed between the states (NM/TX) and so the lower basin got much of the attention and there's even a draft settlement for that portion of the Pecos. This morning's hearings were about default filings - meaning, filing with the court water rights claims that were never responded to by property owners. The OSE sends a packet, with a consent order, detailing the water rights of an owner or the complete lack of water rights. Most of today's filings, with land-owners absent, were about people without state-documented water rights. These would seem to be mostly straightforward matters, but OSE only mails owners. So land-owners absent from this morning's hearing were to be given a summary "default" judgment, having only 10 days to respond after they receive a decision of default. This means no water rights, for today's particular proceedings.

So, what did I learn? In the first case, it was fascinating to hear about a shortage-sharing agreement between an urban area and nearby acequias; like other towns in New Mexico, some ditches have been built over (Asylum Ditch, for example) in Las Vegas. But given the low levels of available surface water in the region, this new arrangement has been necessary. This is quite separate from the troubles of the federal Storrie Dam project, which is now also experiencing chronically low levels.* The Special Master (Synder) made it clear to all parties that a long-term settlement will be necessary, and not just an annual sharing schedule to be repeated ad nauseum into the future.

In the second, I couldn't help but feel this was a more legalistic but arguably fairer system than the outright stripping of land grants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Still, hearing the name of default owners (about 90% of them Hispanic), I could not shake the feeling that a strange form of injustice was proceeding. Then again, a few people who were present made it clear that they had little interest (now or in the past) in irrigating their property and didn't even know why they were mailed anything from the OSE. And that is what 50 years of assumed "pueblo water rights" does to land-use and land cover changes - Las Vegas diverted what they wanted during that time period, creating chronic shortages in the region for agricultural land-users.

Finally, one of the on-going frustrations for both acequia attorneys and the parciantes and mayordomos who attend these hearings is the question of standing: If individuals are cited, in sub-files, and not members of acequias, and are sent zero rights summary judgments even if they are on the physical ditch, what does that do for the long-term water needs of irrigators in the acequia (institution)? And if the attorneys who represent ditches (institutions) have no 'standing' in court when they do not represent non-acequia individuals, what can they do? All acequias have members and physical ditches, but not all physical ditches are entirely controlled by acequias. So the "gaps" in the watershed chain are exploitable both in court (legally) and out of court (water brokers). And if that doesn't trouble you, then I've done a poor job explaining it.
* updated 11.19.09 with corrections, thanks to WG.

The scale of floodwater (control)

2009-11-10T11:52:00.001-07:00

Although I was in Albuquerque yesterday to give a public lecture on my upcoming book, which addresses private cattle ranching in northern Mexico, a special afternoon treat was in store. I jumped into Paul Matthews' pick-up and we did a quick and selective survey of urban flood control structures on the east side of the city that sprawls up the Sandia Mountains.

It reminded again how scaled water is, whether it's about delivery or flood control, too little or too much, in the greater Southwest. The first shot shows some upslope watershed control features, many using the natural channels of arroyos, while the later ones emphasize the accumulating scale of urban flood waters in a city that has seen its fair share of flooding in the past.

What's grim about a few of these obvious hydrologic settings is that real estate doesn't care too much about flood issues. It's not just the Mississippi where people have set vulnerable, if pricey in this case, housing smack in the middle of an emphemeral floodplain. Even the mid-slope structures that seem over-built are not, and are a subtle reminder of how quickly flash-flooding can affect a city that is typically concerned about too little water. Albuquerque has its own urban agency for flood control structures (AMAFCA), apart from MRGCD, apart from water treatment...and that's not even mentioning the state agencies or the regional water authority that combines city and county functions.

I close with this shot that, by all accouts, could pass for the Los Angeles River. This lovely view was right by the Applebee's (how appropriate). Now, I wonder when this system will be tested by a natural high water event. Are these built for 100-year floods? Many of the upslope houses have only appeared in the last 5 years and so have not been exposed to a severe flood threat. I'll post a more historical entry about the middle valley and its flood experiences soon.

Acequias de Chupadero Matanza

2009-11-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

We attended the celebratory "matanza" yesterday in the nearby village of Chupadero; this was to commemorate, if not celebrate outright, the recent and perhaps temporary victory of the acequia in a water rights transfer case. At stake was the village's ditch waters that run through the physical acequia in Chupadero. An applicant, or plaintiff, had tried to transfer water rights along the stream and also between surface rights to groundwater rights, and the commissioners denied that request. While decided administratively by the acequia's commissioners, the fact that the plaintiffs (folks hoping to transfer water along and out of the ditch in Chupadero) dropped their appeal was significant. A new state statute, from 2003, gives acequias the ability to approve or deny transfers of waters especially when "impairment" of ditch water is at stake. This new rule is getting severely tested as you might expect, but there just haven't been that many (formal) cases yet. The downside to the dropped appeal is that no "case law" in terms of formal jurisprudence was established. So while Cook vs. Acequia del Gavilan (near Espanola/Ojo Caliente) case has a formal pathway and some paperwork to follow, this was all based on testimony heard and recorded in the acequia "chambers" in Chupadero. Santa Fe Properties has, at least for the time being, relented. We'll see what the next move is on their side of the ditch.

Now, to the event: Commissioners and parciantes had built a nice home-made sunken pig pit in which to roast said animal, as well as some of the "bonus" game meats provided by Jack. He'd had a great hunting season so the menu included antelope, elk, wild turkey, and supposedly an elusive trout (I never saw it). I calmly and patiently waited out the carnivorous parciantes to get a taste of the pig cheeks (cachetes) and was finally rewarded by a nice, meaty, fatty cut. It was like buttah.

This was all held in a parciante's backyard on a beautiful 68 degree day, kids everywhere, chickens loose, and a couple of goats distracting a few of the visitors. It was a meat-fest, to say the least, but I did save some room for an unholy combination of sugared french toast/peach cobbler concoction someone made.
It's rare than an acequia gets to celebrate good news when it comes to legal cases, but in this instance, it was time to enjoy. Testimonials, speeches, followed and it was nice to see people gathered for the occasion.
You can read more about the Cook cases here and more recent news here, and of course, props to La Jicarita which continues to publish the official but underground stories on water and land disputes in New Mexico.
Now it's time for a follow-up piece; stay tuned.

Water exursion, v 4.0, Rio Grande, Jemez

2009-11-07T09:08:00.003-07:00

We were able to take an actual personal day, yesterday, and visit some places that I'd never seen before along the Jemez River, and places that I hadn't seen in more than a decade (Jemez Caldera, El Valle). We stopped first at the White Rock overlook, for a nice shot of the Buckman Diversion intake on the Rio Grande, where the soon-to-be constructed bladder dam will be finished, so that Santa Fe can start diverting its "share" of SanJuan/Chama water (~5000 afy). But let's be honest, it's not new water, it's a substitution: surface water for the groundwater pumps currently operating in the Buckman field. Is it a better choice? The Buckman plan does use at least a renewable (surface) water supply, in lieu of an unsustainable (groundwater) withdrawal rate in the area west of the city. For me, it's a bit like changing drugs, from heroine to something lesser, say cigarrettes...or changing dealers. Not surprisingly, Las Campanas, one of the primary "corporate" beneficiaries of the Buckman plan, will no longer be part of the partnership with the city or the county (S Fe). Will they get water? You bet. It is not unlike the so-called Southern Delivery System, aka "Colorado Springs southern straw," in that my fair city is mainlining from the Pueblo Reservoir for the future (development). Note the map that illustrates the "local delivery system" - a complex system of massive pipes that will travel through a beautiful valley to the south of the city. Can cities be considered parasites?

We then did a long drive along 4, through the Jemez Caldera, along the south rim of the El Valle area (a national preserve) that used to be the 89,000 acre Baca Ranch, and then down the stretch of the Jemez that goes through the eponymous Springs, Jemez State Monument (Giusewa Pueblo, abandoned ca 1692), and through Jemez Pueblo itself. It was good to see the Soda Dam as well, a feature I hadn't seen since Steve Hall's 1998 Geomorphology of the Southwest course (at UT). Much of the Jemez fields were fallow, but it was clear that some standing dry corn, and some existing pasture, were still being irrigated. It's a stunning area and one to re-visit soon.

At the 3/4 point of our loop, we entered through the 550 into Bernalillo, and we had to share this photo of the residential-industrial complex. Witness the earth-movers of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, creators of big boxes (near you) and new fauxdobe cul-de-sac units. But it's too easy to blame this on suburbia, or developers, when the root and ultimate cause remains our very nature, and our reluctance to stop procreating.

Discussion with Stanley Crawford

2009-11-03T13:04:00.023-07:00

Today I went up to Dixon, via the high road, for a discussion-cum-interview with Stanley Crawford, author of several works relevant to this blog (Mayordomo, A Garlic Testament, The River in Winter). As a former mayordomo for his acequia (del Bosque, in first photo), I wanted his take on how governance has changed on the ditch, if at all. While acequia bylaws are now de rigueur if the ditch seeks state and federal funding for projects and repairs, he called them a fallback set of rules. In other words, if you have to use them a lot, the ditch is in trouble. Most people don't bother to read the full set of bylaws.
So the good news, if one can call it that, is that governance has changed little over the last 30-40 years in Dixon, at least on his ditch. The typical, but occasional, lawsuit, and dealing with the alphabet suit of state and federal agencies responsible for water managment, were par for this acequia's course.

Unlike acequias living on the encroaching suburban fringe of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and to a lesser extent Taos, Dixon is fairly removed from most population centers. People who do move there know what they're getting into, even if "farming" as a livelihood is no longer a goal for most. Yes, the ditch has seen a relative decline in the percentage of arable, irrigated land used on an annual basis. Yes, there was an upturn in the last decade or so due to regional markets, and Santa Fe's has been a boon for some. But there are several perverse reverse-incentives for farmers, or wanna-be farmers, principally centered on the price of entry into irrigated land...and subsidies. While ADM lives at the subsidy trough of the federal government, without "feeding the world" (just their investors), small farmers barely benefit from the massive programs at the national scale. But how many new, idealistic 18-25 year olds are ready or able to plunk down $50,000-100,000 an acre for irrigated land out here? They won't see that amount back as an income, in fact they'd be lucky to make 20-30% of that, even in Santa Fe selling dollar apples to tourists.

The Embudo valley is not fully adjudicated, there is no active metering or OSE flume activity, and it may well be "another twenty years" before resolution is found for these parciantes. I could find no direct link to the hydrographic surveys but presume it's been done, probably long ago. Crawford mentioned an aspect that I had not priced on an area basis, that of the costs of adjudication per acre. Some 20 years ago, the Aamodt case was running $10,000 per acre, in terms of the legal fees and costs, for the Pojoaque Valley alone. Back then, that was probably more than the cost (per acre) of irrigated land.

Crawford and his wife also have a place to rent out on the farm, a two-level adobe with a view of his drip-line irrigated field, still on the acequia but conserving water, and it looks like an idyllic place for a writer's retreat. Maybe next time, Stan.

Next steps...Active Water Resource Management (rules)

2009-11-02T11:21:00.002-07:00

One of my next priorities is to understand the more recent OSE strategy of Active Water Resource Management. This is an attempt to accelerate water management, whether the basin is fully adjudicated (such as the Mimbres Valley), or unadjudicated (Rio Gallinas). Now, if only I could get a hold of someone in each area. What this amounts to, in the best-case scenario, is appointing a "mayordomo" for mayordomos, a Water Master for each basin to negotiate water use.

The sarcastic side of me wants to think of it as "Insert mid-management Pharaoh here ( )" -- The worst-case scenario means that AWRM will break traditional management and authority roles, especially that of mayordomo, along ditches that have pretty much well managed their affairs without this form of governmentality. Are we witnessing the latest incarnation of the "rule of experts" as Timothy Mitchell might put it? As part of this effort, the OSE is installing water meters and flumes for measurement along acequias and the major stream channels, such as the one feature in this photo. And in the Mimbres, adding insult to injuries, senior water rights holders are now making priority calls on junior water rights...to the consternation of the latter.
I tracked down an old NPR story by Fine, regarding how local irrigators feel about AWRM, from the Mimbres and find it still relevant. It's time for some road-trips, soon.

Congreso de las acequias registration time...

2009-10-31T12:34:00.000-06:00

It's time to register for the New Mexico Acequia Association's "Congreso de las Acequias," the 10th annual event they have hosted. You can register here, for the events on December 4th and 5th (09), and it will be held at the Santa Fe County extension building off Rodeo Road (turn-in on Paseo de los Pueblos).

The program looks interesting, and includes a 'blessing of the waters' on Saturday morning as well. It should be a good occasion to meet mayordomos and parciantes from around the state - excellent.

A new concilio, or supervisory board, will be elected as well. I'm registered and paid up, are you?

See you there - hasta pronto!
Photo: Embudo, NM acequia (eye candy only)