Judge Roscoe Woods, Seventh Judicial District Court Judge,
denied the application from the Augustin Plains Ranch LLC to pump
54,000 acre feet of water a year from the San Agustin Plains basin at
the Catron County Court house this morning, April 5, in Reserve, New
Mexico.
There was standing room only with over one hundred people
present at the hearing in protest as lawyers shared their arguments for
almost five hours.
The State Engineer, the Carol Pittman protestants group,
the Catron county board of commissioners and the community protestants
argued the application was speculative, had no commitments from an end
user and lacked an imperative necessity for the water, among other
arguments.
In their defense, the Augustin Plains LLC’s lawyer argued
there was a demand, a thorough proposal of plans and listed six counties
as the targeted end users of the water.
The San Agustin Basin, about fifty miles west of Socorro,
supplies water to northwestern Socorro and northeastern Catron County.
The first drilling application was submitted by Augustin Plains Ranch,
LLC in 2007.
*Editor’s note: a detailed article will be available pending a written order from a judge.
[Photo above was received and added to the post August 23.] Pecos River Canyon, about 30 miles from Santa Fe,
a favorite spot for New Mexico public servants to be sick, on sick days. Folks are speculating those are the Appellate Court judges in the photo above. Good. I hope it's them. Fishing can make you honest.
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Here's something we just got from Don Wiltshire:
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"Save your gas and put your Duct Tape away:
The New Mexico Appellate
Court hearing over the matter of the Augustin Plains Ranch LLC's
application to mine water, set for Thursday, August 21st has been
CANCELLED! What does this mean? Is this a good thing? We don't know.
We will find out. We will let you know!"
Water project doesn’t benefit counties Are you incensed? Well if you are not, you should be. The Augustin Plains Ranch, LLC just filed another amended application for 54,000 acre feet of water on the Plains of San Agustin. In their new application, they only want the water for export to the Rio Rancho and Albuquerque area, to include the Middle Rio Grande area. None of it is to be applied to the ranch property. The permit only lists the following beneficial uses: municipal, industrial, commercial, and other (to offset surface water depletions, replacement, sale and/or lease). This water mining project is not for the benefit of Catron and Socorro Counties; it is targeted for the upper portion of the Middle Rio Grande Basin. There will be no royalties or other payments to offset the loss of this water for the counties. The adjacent land owners and most of the properties in the north basin of the San Augustin Plains will have their property values greatly diminished due to the lack of available ground water. The north basin will also undergo hydrocompaction and deferential settlement, with a strong likelihood of tension cracks forming due to the types of sediments from which the ground water is being extracted. (These sediments were saturated with water soon after their deposition when water was able to attach to the sediment grains keeping them apart. As the sediments accumulated some of the water got squeezed out and forced into the more open-pored sediments.) When over pumping occurs, the water holding the sediment particles apart can no longer add to supporting environment and sediments collapse into each other. With hydrocompaction, once the ground water is extracted there is no possibility of recharging the aquifer. Dr. Frank Titus, a hydrogeologist, told me in a personal communication, before his passing; that he thought that the pumping being proposed would deplete the basin in about 10 years. The question then is what are the options when no water is available in the north basin? Your county commissioners need to address this problem, as well as those of you who are reading this article. The Augustin Plains Ranch, LLC proposal also states that they intend to recharge the basin as they are pumping down the water table. In this environmental setting that is just ludicrous. We are in the sixth week of our monsoon season, and no water has yet flowed down any of the ephemeral channels in this part of the basin. Their idea that they can capture this overland flow and put it back into the ground before it is lost to evaporation is just plain stupid. The water that occasionally flows out onto the plains is used by the native plants and the ranchers that have property below these draws. If the Augustin Plains Ranch blocks these draws with structures to divert the flows, that would be considered a “taking” and would require additional permits from the state engineer. Any structure like those being proposed is a point of diversion and requires a permit from the state which I did not see in their application. I would like to know what is the benefit to our counties; a couple of maintenance jobs and temporary construction jobs? This proposal only benefits some other part of the state and the Augustin Plains Ranch, LLC owners. We get our resources plundered to what end? If the citizens of our counties don’t care about this, then we deserve what happens if they prevail. We all need to protest in writing and make our voices heard. Also, contact the San Augustin Water Coalition at www.sanaugustinwatercoalition.net Dennis Inman Geologist
San Augustin Plains are connected. There's more about
that further below, but first we'd like to start with
some history.
The Mission de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, (above - the little mission on the left) and the settlers who clustered around it, comprised the first European settlement on the river, and in the region, founded in 1659. It was then known as
"Paso del Norte" - Pass of the North,
and early on became a trading center
and economic hub of the region.
Oh, and the subject of songs too.
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From
GREAT RIVER -
The Rio Grande in North American History
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History (1954)
by Paul Horgan
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"In its length of nearly two thousand miles and its cultural evidence encompassing ten centuries and more, the Great River remains the unifying vein of history not only of the life adjacent to its banks, but also of the greater Southwest. There, if often far afield, the political, social, and geographical significance of the river can be traced through the times of five sovereignties - those of the Indian, Spain, Mexico, Texas, and the United States.
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In manners of living, a long, slow sequence unfolded for the early river peoples. Prehistoric intuitions among them gradually gave way to knacks and simple ingenuities -
primitive technologies to do with water, fire, agriculture, shelter, travel, weaponry. For centuries all these were developed without that sense of shock that accelerated rates of
discovery produce. But with the waves of activity and means of control of the natural world that rose with the industrial revolution and the migratory imperatives of the nineteenth century, man's impact on the environment brought swift and radical change within a single human lifetime."
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"Into the Rio Grande country, ranging through the area of what became three immense modern states and touching the great length of the river's immediate course, came railroads, electricity, exploitation of mineral resources, colonization, urbanization at key points, and - not to be undervalued - the popular discovery of the natural aesthetic of generally benign climate over a landscape of most desirable beauty."
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"In modern days, therefore, population not only changed in
character, it grew in a few generations to a size that threatened
to create a dangerous imbalance between what was available
to sustain life and what was demanded by headlong social
increase. The problem was not exclusive to the Southwest,
it plagued the nation and, indeed, with Latin America included,
it invaded the hemisphere.
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But it was in the Southwest that technological change
became most rapidly visible. The desert country, having
sustained sufficiently the modest requirements of the Indians,
the Spaniard, and the Mexican, now had to meet the
environmental levies of the United States genius for industry.
Added to these were a foreshortened vision of the good life,
which the American citizen and his suppliers made commonly
necessary without much common foresight for the future
effects of the technological society on such matters as pollution
of air, earth, and water, and - most significant for the
Southwest - dangerous depletion of the very sources
of water itself."
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"The Rio Grande, long an adequate though never a
voluminous river except in flood tide, has been attended
in modern times by concerned management in its government
conservancy districts; but in many places the river has become
only a trickle, and in others entirely dry, to be replenished
only by flood from otherwise dry or meager local tributaries
and by diminishing groundwater, this always in the face of
increasing needs of its resources in both the United States
and Mexico."
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Drought Fuels Water War Between
Texas and New Mexico
by Sandra Postel - Jaunuary 18, 2013
As climate change alters rainfall patterns and river flows, tensions are bound to rise between states and countries that share rivers that cross their borders.
In the Rio Grande Basin of the American Southwest, that future inevitability has arrived.
Last week Texas, suffering through a devastating drought, filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court alleging that New Mexico is failing to live up to its water delivery commitments under the 1938 Rio Grande Compact.
The Rio Grande rises in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and flows 1,900 miles before entering the Gulf of Mexico.
Texas charges that New Mexico’s pumping of groundwater in the region below Elephant Butte Dam to the New Mexico-Texas border is reducing Rio Grande flows into Texas, thereby depriving the state’s farms and cities of water they are legally entitled to under the Compact.
Texas v. New Mexico is likely to be but one of a string of disputes that erupt as drought causes water supplies to dwindle and water-sharing pacts devised in wetter and less-populated times can no longer hold the peace.
Texas doesn’t specify how much water it believes New Mexico is illegally withholding, but indicates it is sufficient to irrigate thousands of acres of farmland. The city of El Paso also relies on Rio Grande water for half of its supply.
New Mexico officials have consistently maintained that the state is sending to Texas all the Rio Grande water to which it is legally entitled. The state attorney general said in a recent statement that Texas is “trying to rustle New Mexico’s water and using a lawsuit to extort an agreement that would only benefit Texas while destroying water resources for hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans.”
Fighting words, to be sure.
If the Supreme Court justices decide to take up the case, they would do well to first sign up for hydrology 101.
One of the great water myths is that rivers and underground aquifers are separate and distinct sources of water. In reality, rivers and groundwater are often intimately connected.
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Groundwater provides the “base” flow that keeps many rivers running during dry times. For their part, rivers and irrigation canals leak water into the subsurface, recharging the aquifers below.
In dry years, when surface supplies run low, farmers often turn to underground water to replace or supplement their irrigation supply. That’s what New Mexico farmers downstream of Elephant Butte have done during years of drought and low river flows.
In the Mesilla Basin, for example, groundwater is the primary source of irrigation water for about 5,000 acres, but is a supplemental source of supply for more than 70,000 acres. So in dry times, groundwater withdrawals ratchet up.
According to an article on the impacts of groundwater pumping in the Rio Grande Basin published in this month’s Ecosphere, a journal of the Ecological Society of America, during the 2004 drought, when federal officials curtailed releases from Elephant Butte Dam, pumping from the Messila Aquifer rose to twice the long-term average.
The drought of recent years has elicited a similar response from farmers, and groundwater pumping in the Rio Grande Valley has increased markedly. But how much this pumping has affected flows into Texas is in question.
The current bi-state conflict began in 2007 when Texas farmers complained that New Mexico was extracting too much groundwater. To avoid an escalating legal fight, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Elephant Butte, worked out an agreement with two irrigation districts in Texas and New Mexico to give Texas more river water to make up for New Mexico’s groundwater use.
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That agreement didn’t sit well with New Mexico officials, however, and three years later the state filed suit against the Bureau, charging that the deal gave away too much of New Mexico’s Rio Grande allotment to Texas and would cause $183 million in damages to the state’s agricultural economy.
Texas shot back with the lawsuit filed last week.
Meanwhile, the drought persists. Elephant Butte is at 8 percent of its storage capacity, the same as when I visited the reservoir last August. .
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While the legal case may drag on for years, it is a wake-up call for all states and nations that share transboundary waters to proactively add resilience to their treaties and institutions before crises hit, and even more importantly, to develop workable governing structures over water where they are lacking.
It is also a lesson to invest now in water efficiency improvements so as to reduce pressures on both rivers and aquifers.
Because while the Supreme Court may ultimately decide this Texas-sized water dispute, even the highest court in the land can’t dictate Mother Nature to deliver more water.
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Sandra Postel is director of the Global Water Policy Project and Freshwater Fellow of the National Geographic Society. She is the author of several acclaimed books, including the award-winning Last Oasis, a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment, and one of the “Scientific American 50.”
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Below is a "Comment" to the article from
Dr. William Turner of Albuquerque,
a water broker. .
Albuquerque, New Mexico
January 21
Some New Mexico State Engineers have had a screw Texas point of view which is now coming home to roost. For example, in 1972, Charles Crowder, a land developer and visionary, acquired 22,000 acres of land in the area of Santa Theresa. It was his long term vision to build a major metropolitan community and he needed water. So, Mr. Crowder had a meeting with long time State Engineer Steve Reynolds. Mr. Crowder asked Mr. Reynolds if he needed to file applications with the State Engineer Office for the 36 water wells
he planned.
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. Reynolds replied:“Hell no Charley. Drill all the wells you want. We want to get that water before it gets to Texas.” His mismanagement of the Pecos River resulted in the failure of New Mexico to deliver water to Texas on the Pecos River. The Supreme Court required New Mexico to bring their deliveries into accord with the Pecos River Compact. His mismanagement cost New New Mexico taxpayers more than $100 million to retire private water rights to satisfy the judgement.
The YouTube piece below is basically a music video
of birds in the Middle Rio Grande Valley set to the music of
Composer/Performer Paul Schwartz.
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The following is from a Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District office report concerning the testimony of hydrologist Dr. Frank Titus, after he testified before them as an expert witness, in January of 2008. The full report is available on the San Augustin Water Coalition website. It should be noted that since 2008 the LLC has modified and enlarged on the original plan that was publicized - which had the water being piped to Socorro and then put in the Rio Grande at that point. Now they talk about piping it to Rio Rancho, or perhaps even Santa Fe. This is also before their new "idea" that they can catch enough rain to recharge the aquifer - a ludicrous proposal, at best. . Bruce Frederick, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center attorney that represents many, many parties objecting to the Water Grab, has done the math on that one. It should be noted that this gentleman isn't just a lawyer, he also has a Masters Degree in Groundwater Hydrology from New Mexico Tech. .
. Here's what he told the Rio Rancho Observer: “I think it’s an absurd notion on the face of it,” said New Mexico Environmental Law Center attorney Bruce Frederick of the proposal of pumping 54,000 acre-feet a year and replacing it with rain water. Frederick has opposed the company’s attempt to get a pumping permit. To meet the company’s goal, he said each acre in the proposed project area would have to produce 12 acre-feet, or 3.9 million gallons, of water each year." . .Well, unless the same kind of storms that came at Noah's time are in the forecast, 144 inches of rain per year is simply NOT in the cards. Are these people really, really that stupid - or do they take us all for fools? Or both? Anyhow, here's the report about Dr. Titus's testimony. . Dr. Titus said that this proposal to bring 54,000acre ft.of water per year out of the San Augustin Basin over to the Rio Grande, in his book, is imaginative and if it goes that way that it will be very profitable for somebody. But it will also screw a bunch of people. By his calculations, the 37 proposed wells to provide the water are laid out in an array covering about 14 sections in the vicinity of Datil and running from just south of US Hwy 60 north for about 6-7 miles. If these wells produce 54,000 ac-ft of water per year, and if they create a cone of depression that is twice the area of the footprint of the wells, they will create draw down of 30 feet a year and that is if they have the capacity to produce that much water at all. The proposition that 37 wells can provide that much water assumes that the wells in an aquifer that is as prolific as the aquifer in the vicinity of Albuquerque and this is a unique, marvelous aquifer. The proposition that 37 wells can be drilled in the northeastern part of the San Augustin Plains and produce 2,000-3,000 gallons per minutes is at least highly questionable. At 30 feet of draw down per year they could not produce for very long. The wells are in a highly prolific part of the aquifer, but in order to produce for many decades at that rate they would have to cover the whole basin with wells and have dramatic draw downs over the basin and most of the rest of the basin does not have the permeability that that particular part does. . If the State Engineer approve such a proposal, the most distressing part is that which is the good aquifer end of the San Augustin Plains it probably also discharges a significant amount of water down Alamosa Creek and ultimately through the box that is about 15 miles down stream and over to the west side of Elephant Butte Reservoir. There is no quantitative data to know how much water is involved coming down the pathway. A proposal to bring 54,000 ac-ft per year and put it in the river in the Socorro vicinity and thereby balance an equal amount of pumping out of the Albuquerque/Rio Rancho area does several things. First of all it would measurably reduce the flow of the Rio Grande surface water system including through the District’s distribution system. Markedly reduce the flow between Albuquerque and the point at which water is put into the Rio Grande Valley in the Socorro area - that is an 80 mile stretch. There is an inevitable reduction in wet water flow. There is the issue of the contribution from Monticello Creek, Alamosa Creek coming out of the San Augustin Basin to the west side of Elephant Butte Reservoir. Assuming that the addition at Socorro matches the withdrawal at Albuquerque at least there would be a balance in that reach. But when you go on down stream, it is inevitable that if you take water our of the San Augustin Basin and you pipe it to Socorro, then you cut off the flow down Alamosa Creek and Monticello Creek into Elephant Butte. Ultimately, even though it may take decades to happen, the total flow of the Rio Grande will be reduced by the amount of water that is taken out of the San Augustin Basin.
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. Then there is the problemof the closed basin character of the San Augustin Basin and it’s an issue of how long it is able to continue to contribute that water to the Socorro reach assuming a pipeline is built and water is piped. Over a period of decades the water table will be drawn down so much in the San Augustin region that it will no longer supply fresh water. Once all of the easily available water out of the San Augustin Basin is exploited and no longer able to contribute water to the Rio Grande, then there is no replacement water coming in. If this is approved, we will have created an additional cone of depression and removed water from the Albuquerque area which cannot be replaced now and there will be no more water coming into the Socorro area because the San Augustin region will be exhausted and we will cut off the source of water going down to recharge the system at Elephant Butte. By short sighted approval of such a proposition, we will be put in a position where there is simply no way to balance the amount of water that has been taken out and we will come up seriously short. Of course, it will not be within the tenure of this State Engineer or several others, but the State of New Mexico is going to be around for a long time as well as the MRGCD. Dr. Titus said that in his personal opinion that for the District to participate in any way in this kind of a thing - it’s basically a money making scam by someone that owns a ranch over there. .
