Rio Grande dropping, Albuquerque shuts down drinking water diversions

For the second time in less than a week, Albuquerque is shutting down its drinking water diversion from the Rio Grande after the river dropped too low.

John Stomp, chief operating officer for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, gave the word to stop diverting river water shortly before 4 p.m. (8/28/2012 after Rio Grande flows at Albuquerque’s Central Avenue Bridge dropped to 128 cubic feet per second. The Water Utility’s permits that allow it to take river water set a 122 cubic feet per second benchmark, below which the utility is supposed to shut down its operations.

The utility also had to shut down last Friday when river levels dropped. The problem illustrates the way water managers are operating the combination of natural and man-made plumbing through Albuquerque on a knife’s edge right now as a result of drought conditions. You’ve got the Water Utility, the Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District all trying to manage the flow of water through the system, with the six valley Pueblos, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission all having overlapping responsibilities for both getting water to human users who need it and leaving enough water behind in the river for endangered silvery minnows.

Want to follow along at home? Here’s the real time readout from the US Geological Survey’s Central Avenue gauge (reading 128 cubic feet per second as I write this). All around Albuquerque, water agency folk are sitting at their desks this afternoon hitting “reload” on the page and fretting as it drops. (OK, and at least one reporter hitting “reload”.) 122 cfs is the magic number at which the Water Utility has to stop pulling drinking water out of the river. 100 cfs is a more serious target – the amount legally required under the Endangered Species Act rules to keep a refuge for the silvery minnow in this stretch of the river.

Some background from last week on the current situation.