South Sacramento Water Group hears from
Otero County administrator, Sandia hydrologist
By Ellen Wedum
Published in Mountain Monthly, October 2007
Chair Lou Wilkerson opened the meeting in the Mayhill Community Center at 6:15pm on Thursday September 13. Jerry Sutherland, appointed two days previously as representative from the Cloudcroft City Council, did not attend.
Lou introduced the two guest speakers, David Chace from Sandia National Labs and Marty Moore, Otero County Administrator.
Hydrologist David Chace spoke first. He has been working on behalf of the Last Chance Water Co. They are monitoring water levels in 70 wells in the southern two-thirds of the New Mexico portion of the Salt Basin (the Otero Mesa) since 2002 (continuous monitoring in 8 of them). They are also monitoring water quality in seven other wells. There is some overlap with the study that Geoff Rawling reported on at the previous meeting in the vicinity of Timberon and Piñon. (See page 42 of the September Mountain Monthly.)
Chace observed that the Rawling study shows active recharge in the Sacramento Mountain area, in that well levels rose in response to the July 2006 rains, but he does not think we will see a long-term sustained recharge. The water will drain downhill. In the Salt Basin he did not observe any increase in well levels in after the July 2006 rains, which were fewer inches but relatively the same percentage increase as in the Sacramento Mountains. He has observed about a 6-inch decline in water levels each year since the study started in 2002. Pumping by Dell City was 211,000 acre-feet in 2000 and their pumping has been increasing since then. That is sixty-nine billion gallons of water in 2000 (one acre-foot is 325,853 gallons). Some of the water pumped by Dell City is recharged to the Salt Basin, but it drains south, not back north to New Mexico. The water level in the Salt Flats south of Dell City is at the ground surface, but on the north end of the Salt Basin the water level is 750 feet below the ground surface.
El Paso sued to remove water on the lower Rio Grande from New Mexico about ten years ago, and the Supreme Court ruled that water is a commodity and can be removed from New Mexico unless it is “earmarked” for use in New Mexico. Since then New Mexicans have been trying to earmark every drop of New Mexico water for use in the state. The Salt Basin had been overlooked until 2002, when the Interstate Stream Commission and Last Chance Water Company both filed claims, with the ISC’s February 12 claim beating Last Chance by 48 hours.
Since the end of the 2007 legislative session, the various groups interested in the Salt Basin have started to form a collaborative research group to share information. The Last Chance Water Company and the ISC have reached an agreement to work cooperatively, Sandia has agreed to share information, and the ISC wants to expand this collaborative effort to include NM Tech, NMSU, USGS and private industry all cooperating together. Chace expects that eventually a combined report will be made available to the public. The legislature appropriated $1 million, for FY 2008, of the requested $2.1 million for a proposed three-year study. The three goals are (1) to reduce the uncertainty in the recharge to the Salt Basin from the Sacramento Mountains (current estimates range from 35,000 to 200,000 acre-feet per year), (2) increase understanding of the distribution and movement of groundwater and (3) improve estimates of the amount of water and the quality of water the Salt Basin can hold. Chace expects that the legislature will provide additional funding for the study after receiving a progress report next year.
In answer to a question about politics and the media, Chace said that he believes that in the long run politics will drive decisions, not the science. Whatever happens in the Salt Basin will be a political decision. Texas pumping might drain the Salt Basin dry because there is no interstate water compact for the Salt Basin.
Every basin in NM is ‘mined’ to some extent—there is not a sustainable recharge. In Albuquerque they pumped their aquifer for years without monitoring, then wells began to go dry. So the key to good water management is careful monitoring.
Lou Wilkerson then introduced County Administrator Marty Moore, remarking that water plans are “more legal than they are realistic.” If you don’t have a water plan, somebody else can take your water away from you. Marty Moore reported that Otero County has 25 to 30 water distribution systems (municipalities, water companies, water associations) of sufficient size to be of concern. His office has been gathering comments, and what he thought intuitively seems to be correct. There are lots of water plans but none of them seem to be actively implemented. There is no cohesive effort in the county to address a water planning effort.
Otero County is “essentially gushing with water,” but the issue is how to distribute it. That process is driven by both terrain and regulations. Another issue is line loss in the systems. His office is collecting information from the different systems on line loss. For example, the village of Cloudcroft estimates 10%—30% line loss, which can mean 10,000 to 30,000 gallons per day. Is that loss someone else’s gain in another area? Otero County is not going to pay for another water plan, but since the former plans had few benchmarks, some reworking is needed. He is waiting for a review by Dan Abercrombie of the Natural Resource Conservation Service, then he will present a report, including comments from county residents and the information from water systems, to the county commissioners. Lou Wilkerson requested that Marty inform the SSWG when the report is presented, so members can come.
He also said that the Chair of the Board of the Interstate Stream Commission last year suggested to him that Otero County should apply for water rights. Counties have not often done this in the past, and he thinks that the county individual water systems would not like the possible loss of local control that this might involve. As long as he is County Administrator, “water will plow ahead,” but he needs help to push that plow.
The next meeting of the SSWG will be on November 9 at 6pm, in the Mayhill Community Center. Contact Lou Wilkerson (loufire99@yahoo.com, 505/575-687-4098) for more information.