27 May 2009

New Mexico Looks to Future Use of Colorado River Water

Pipeline planned for drinking water for Navajo Indian Nation

 

Nearly 90 percent of New Mexico’s Colorado River water goes to irrigating farmland.

Nearly 90 percent of New Mexico’s Colorado River water goes to irrigating farmland.

By Nancy L. Pontius
Special Correspondent

Littleton, Colorado — In recent years, New Mexico’s share of water from the Colorado River has satisfied the state’s needs, and “we have actually been in pretty good shape,” John D’Antonio, secretary of the New Mexico Interstream Commission, told America.gov.

Nearly 90 percent of this water is used for irrigating farmland, while the remainder goes to homes, ranches, businesses and industries. As in most western states, water use for agriculture has a higher priority based on older claims for water rights, so the current growing population in cities and suburbs has less water available to it.

The state is allowed to use approximately 800 million cubic meters (642,000 acre-feet) of Colorado River water annually, which goes to:

• The Navajo Indian Nation.

• The Jicarilla Apache Tribe.

• Large cities, including Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

 

Fly fishing is one recreational water-use activity in New Mexico.

Fly fishing is one recreational water-use activity in New Mexico.

• Two coal-burning power plants that use water for cooling.

• Small communities, farms and ranches.

Twenty-two American Indian tribes have water rights for the Colorado River and other water sources in the state, and these rights are usually the oldest claims, but for 21 of these 22 tribes the exact amount of water owned by the tribe is not known or settled because the water rights have not been legally determined in court.

Two large water projects in the state move water from the San Juan River (a tributary to the Colorado River) to locations where the water is needed. The Navajo Irrigation Project takes water from the Navajo Reservoir for about 28,300 hectares (70,000 acres) of farmland. The San Juan-Chama Project is a transmountain diversion bringing water about 322 kilometers (200 miles) through a series of tunnels to the middle of the Rio Grande Basin, which includes large New Mexican cities such as Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

In the future, New Mexico is looking to secure federal funding to construct a $1 billion pipeline to provide drinking water for the Navajo Indian Nation from the San Juan River. This tribe is currently living in Third World conditions without good access to drinking water, D’Antonio said. The project would draw on the state’s currently unused portion of Colorado River water.

New Mexico’s state boundaries contain land that is located in both the upper and lower basins of the Colorado River. The state has some lower-basin obligations because its Gila River is a tributary of the Colorado, but “New Mexico is [primarily] an upper basin state and is limited by the Upper Colorado Compact to 11.25 percent” of the water supplied by the upper basin, D’Antonio said.

The New Mexico Interstream Commission supervises the state’s compliance with the Colorado River regulations. “We can take [our] share off the San Juan River, but only [our] share; the rest has to go downstream,” D’Antonio said. And, if at some point the river levels become too low, New Mexico will have to absorb some of the shortages.

More information can be found at the Web site of the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer.