.
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Draining the San Augustin aquifer will put an end
to the great hunting in our area - if not immediately,
then soon enough. Magdalena is the gateway to
some of the best elk hunting in the American West,
but pumping 54,000 acre feet of water annually
and piping it to points still unknown is going to
affect wells, and springs, and wildlife
all over the entire region.
So say scientists that have weighed in on the matter,
and so naturally the New Mexico Department of
Game and Fish is one of the many "protestants"
in the case against the foreigners.
Currently, the entire mess on their application
is before the state Supreme Court. But this
case will be going on further - a new application,
new arguments, more New York lawyers, etc.,
ad infinitum.
Please "SHOUT OUT" to Governor Martinez
at the bottom of this page, and contact your
state representative and senator.
Please tell them:
NO!! ON THE SAN AUGUSTIN WATER GRAB!!
NO BAD SCIENCE!
NO FOREIGN OWNERSHIP OF
NEW MEXICO WATER!!
PERIOD.
.
Statements from
AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. FRED PHILLIPS
Director of the Hydrology Program
New Mexico Tech
Socorro, New Mexico
Conducted early August, 2013
.
[Besides pumping water, the foreigners have
another brilliant idea, and that's how they'll
"recharge" the aquifer.]
.
"The developers there, the San Augustin Ranch,
are proposing to put in wells that are very deep,
and the number that I heard mentioned in the newspaper
and so on, was 3,000 feet deep, and they claim that
they will pump a confined aquifer that will have
minimum effects on the shallower aquifers,
which is where most of the local residents rely for
domestic water and water for livestock."
.
.
"They also claim that they are going to induce recharge
in some way, and this is not quite clear to me,
I have not seen the specifics on this, so I can't comment
very well on the merits of it,
but I have some inherent doubts about it....
because, the amount of time that's required for water
to reach the depths which they're proposing to pump
are very considerable, and studies haven't been done
on this, but if its typical of other basins in this part
of the country, that water at that depth, probably
recharged during the Pleistocene, during the last
ice age, more than 10,000 years ago, and the idea
that you could induce surface infiltration at the present
time and resupply that aquifer that is 3,000 feet deep,
is somewhat....it's difficult to envision how
that's going to work."
.
Interviewer: This claim that they can capture
all the rainfall that's being lost to evaporation seems
like an EXTREME concept, to put it mildly. I googled
and found that the way it's done is to somehow seal the
land - and that this has been done in parts
of north Africa and the Mideast.
What can you tell me here?
.
"Any water that runs off - the San Augustin Basin
is a closed basin - there's no outlet to the ocean,
so it runs down into the middle of the basin and then
it sinks down into the land. Whatever runs off
to the central playa, most of that becomes
groundwater recharge.
So, the only way to increase that groundwater
recharge is to reduce the amount that the plants
and the soil are using, and the standard method
for doing that - as you say - is to put some sort
of seal - asphalt, or plastic, or something, over the
land surface, so you collect all of the precipitation,
all of the rainfall, and you put it
into some central collection area where it then
infiltrates downward....and that's technically
feasible, but I have doubts as to whether converting
large areas of the landscape around the San Augustin Plains
to asphalt or something similar would be acceptable to
most people that live in the area."
.
What about the idea that if you seal it off....
well, isn't there a chance that funguses, microbes,
biological strangeness....that something, some
problem, could occur beneath the surface?
.
"Well, I think any 'biological strangeness' that
would be induced by putting a seal over the land
surface would be small in comparison to the
'biological strangeness' of denuding the landscape."
.
Then, of course, there's no opportunity for wildlife.
.
"That is correct, yes. Once you've removed all the vegetation,
then you've eliminated the ecosystem."
.
Note: The above is just a small part of the interview
we conducted with Dr. Phillips. We have a blog post up
from last summer that has much more - see it here:
.
.
.
The whole area is a "wildlife park" of sorts.
Nearby US Forest Service lands offer beautiful
ponderosa forests, miles
of trout streams, and
numerous lakes. All over this country one
can find herds of elk, deer, and antelope,
along
with gangs, rafts, or posses of turkeys
(that's what ya' call a bunch of 'em).
The region is also home to mountain lion, bighorn
sheep,
black bear, Mexican wolf, bobcat, fox, coyote, badger,
bald eagle,
golden eagle, ducks, geese, quail, dove,
and many other species of wildlife.
.
.
This area of New Mexico is famous for having
the world's largest elk. Elk in the area have scored
over 400 Boone and
Crocket.
.
.
Mule deer also grow large racks in this area,
with Boone and
Crocket 200+ bucks killed
in recent years.
.
.
The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish
is only one in a long list of "protestants" in
