In May, the U.S. Supreme Court approved a settlement of the Rio Grande Compact between New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. The ruling brings with it some high expectations for how much water New Mexico is going to have to deliver to its neighbors to the south.
“It's going to upend water allocation in the Lower Rio Grande in New Mexico downstream from Elephant Butte Dam,” said Norm Gaume, the former director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, currently director of New Mexico Water Advocates.
That stretch of the river, including the Rincon and Mesilla Valleys, is home to 40,000 acres of pecan orchards, as well as other irrigated crops, Gaume said.
“The issue was that New Mexico was allowing its irrigators and everybody else in the Lower Rio Grande to use more water than New Mexico has a legal right to use,” Game said. “The Supreme Court settled all of that with a settlement that is fair. It only requires that New Mexico get the Texas and the U.S. shares to El Paso. But in order to do that, New Mexico is going to have to curtail quite a bit of groundwater pumping that everybody is used to.”
The settlement requires the State of New Mexico to purchase and retire 18,200 acre feet of groundwater rights. However, Gaume says even the water saved by that number won’t by itself be enough to satisfy the conditions of the compact.
“The groundwater pumping cuts are going to be much more than that mandated minimum, and I don't think anybody has figured that out yet,” Gaume said.
New Mexico Water Advocates is hosting an online forum on the topic at 6:30 p.m., Wed., Aug. 23.
