Albuquerque’s Rio Grande water diversion dam is in operation again after a week of being shut down because of ash in the river from a wildfire upstream. Photo Credit - Jim Thompson/Journal
Albuquerque’s water utility resumed delivery of Rio Grande water to metro area customers Friday, after tests showed the utility’s treatment plant was successful at removing ash from flooded fire areas upstream.
It had temporarily switched to using groundwater due to concern over the amount of ash in the river water.
Santa Fe’s river water diversion, though, remained shut Friday, even as the city’s alternative reservoir supply dwindled.
Thunderstorms over the area burned by the Las Conchas Fire have sent debris flows and ash into the Rio Grande, leaving the river at times more black than its usual brown.
To the east, runoff from the area burned by the Pacheco Fire threatened Nambé Reservoir, which provides water to the Pojoaque Valley Irrigation District.
The runoff marks the latest wave of problems from one of the worst fire seasons in New Mexico history. While the fires and the damage they directly cause have drawn the most attention, experts say watershed damage is one of the biggest threats they pose in the long term.
The Las Conchas Fire, which started June 26, had burned 156,593 acres by Friday and was 98 percent contained.
Santa Fe was the first to respond to rising ash levels in the Rio Grande. The city’s Buckman Diversion Project takes water from the Rio Grande just downstream from a number of tributary canyons burned in the Las Conchas Fire. The utility shut down operations July 15 because of uncertainty about what was in the water.
In the meantime, the utility turned to water from reservoirs that draw from the watershed east of Santa Fe, but that water supply is being quickly depleted, said Rick Carpenter, manager of the Buckman diversion.
“We’re really, really low on water in our Canyon Road reservoirs,” Carpenter said Friday.
Test results returned this week showed no serious contamination problems, Carpenter said, and the utility hopes to begin diverting water from the Rio Grande again some time next week.
Meanwhile, the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority concluded after a Thursday test run that its water treatment plant was having no difficulty removing the small amount of ash now in the river, chief operating officer John Stomp said. Heavy levels of ash in the river forced the utility to switch to groundwater pumping July 22.
Stomp said he was confident the treatment plant could have successfully removed all of the ash, but he was worried about cost and complications the ash might pose for the plant’s equipment. “We didn’t want to clog up our system,” he said.
The Pacheco Fire in the Sangre de Cristos, which has burned 10,250 acres and is 85 percent contained, has created problems for Pojoaque Valley irrigators. “The Pacheco Fire really did a number on the watershed of the Nambé Reservoir,” said Mary Perea Carlson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Reclamation crews are building an emergency barrier to divert debris from flows into the reservoir, Carlson said.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal
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