Climate change and Santa Fe’s watershed

Santa Fe has long been a model for aggressive and progressive water system management – most notably with the community’s watershed restoration work and its efforts to return some water for environmental flows to the Santa Fe River.

My colleague Kiera Hay had an interesting story over the weekend about another dimension of this work – analyzing the risks of climate change to the city’s water supply and the steps needed to adapt:

Climate change will have profound effects on the Santa Fe watershed in the coming years, and Santa Fe city government and other agencies should be taking proactive action, a new report says.

“Climate change has already begun and will continue to worsen,” the report notes.

The impact of that change, at a minimum, includes increased temperatures, diminished snowpack and earlier spring melts, reduced stream flow, drier mid-to-late summers, increased fire activity and possibility of “catastrophic” fires and more frequent “intense” precipitation that could cause flooding and erosion.

“These are the things that will be the new normal,” City Water Resources Coordinator Claudia Borchert told the Public Utilities Committee during a presentation last week.