New Mexico’s diverging water supply and demand curves

Rio Grande flow at the Central Avenue Bridge is back up to near 200 cubic feet per second this morning after dropping to 122 for much of Tuesday evening. In a story in this morning’s paper, I explained the significance in terms of requirements on the Albuquerque water utility’s river water operating permit. Bottom line – not enough water in the river, and the utility yesterday had to again shut down river diversions and shift to groundwater.

While I was obsessively hitting “reload” on the USGS Central Avenue gauge yesterday, KUNM’s Laura Paskus was down in Las Cruces covering the  57th annual New Mexico Water Conference with the apt program title of “Hard Choices”:

On the Rio Grande, one thing is clear: water supplies will decline at the same time that demand will increase.

Drought aside, New Mexico is already experiencing warmer temperatures. Whether they are agricultural crops, landscaped yards, or riparian trees, plants need more water when it’s warm. Those higher temperatures also increase the amount of water that evaporates from reservoirs.

As the gap between supply and demand continues to increase, it’s likely that cities and farmers will pump more groundwater, a non-renewable resource.