New Mexico Water Administration: Where Is It Going and How Can We Avoid Getting There?

The past decade has shown that New Mexico is now living on the margins of its water budget. Farmers have received inadequate supplies of irrigation water and municipalities are forced to continue depleting groundwater. Water reserves in reservoirs are almost non-existent. Science informs us that this situation is, on average, only going to get worse as the climate warms and also probably dries. Population growth will exacerbate these problems. Continuation of current policy will inevitably result in a lifeless Rio Grande that serves only as an occasional water conduit, conversion of most farmland into low-density housing, and very large, very dry cities. Water in New Mexico is administered under a largely fictional legal system. The legal instrument for implementing prior appropriation is priority administration, but in the middle and lower Rio Grande, at least, it is never used. The doctrine appears both unjust and unworkable to the modern population of New Mexico. Unlike most western states, New Mexico does not recognize instream flow as a beneficial use, but in reality is forced to implement it, not under state law but rather under the Endangered Species Act. New Mexico can either continue to blunder forward into a rapidly changing future while wearing the “emperor’s clothes” of a 19th century water code, or it can establish an adaptable new system through revision of the laws. Desirable elements of a new water law would include (1) primacy of the principle that water is a public resource, (2) recognition that water is New Mexico’s limiting resource and that water laws should reflect societal goals, (3) allocation of water to meet those goals, and (4) administration of water on the basis of publicly negotiated and flexible local agreements.