Editorial: N.M.’s drought woes ignored at state’s peril

Drought. Better get used to it. Better yet, come up with a plan to deal with it.

New Mexico has been in a drought for a decade — the last three years incredibly dry. The forecast is bleak: little rain and little relief from runoff from snowpack because there isn’t much of that, either.

Warm, dry weather is forecast for the next several months. Mountain snowpack is just 30 to 80 percent of normal for this time of year.

The Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico’s largest, is a shadow of its glorious 1990s’ self — a puddle compared to the wide and deep lake it once was, teeming with people fishing, boating and water-skiing.

Rio Grande runoff is forecast at 39 percent of average. Pecos River flow into Santa Rosa Lake is forecast at 36 percent of average.

Canals in southern New Mexico’s agricultural region are dry a month into the irrigation season, which normally begins in February. Farmers are pumping water from aquifers to try to keep their crops going, but some of that water is brackish. That stunts the crops and makes the soil salty.

Without Rio Grande water to refresh and leech out the salts, it’s just a matter of time when it will be a struggle to grow chile, onions or pecans at all.

On top of that, neighboring Texas is suing the state over delivery of water from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Rio Grande Project.

All this bad news adds up to this: New Mexico needs to take a serious look at its water policies, both in terms of conservation and additional resources.

Water policies in the arid Southwest are complex and litigious with states pitted against each other for the precious resource. Urban areas are pitted against agricultural users. Native Americans have senior water rights.

Several legislators took baby steps during the recent session in an attempt to create tools to curb water use. One bill would have set aside $120 million for the state “to acquire, retire, protect and conserve water rights and conserve water in the Lower Rio Grande Basin.” But taking land out of production is not entirely desirable because someday it may be needed for food production.

And letting the farming industry die won’t help the state’s economy. According to the U.S. census, New Mexico’s agricultural industry is valued at about $2.2 billion a year, although farmers say it’s higher.

But hard questions remain.

How do you curb ever-increasing demand? What other resources can be brought to bear? Is pumping and piping water from rural areas to cities along the river viable? Can some of the vast pools of brackish water around the state be tapped and made potable? Is it reasonable now for huge resources to remain untapped under a few remote ranches or state and federal lands? Are all conservation techniques being employed that can be?

It’s increasingly clear that just wishing for more rain and snow in large amounts anytime soon isn’t a viable water policy.

It’s time for lawmakers, water policy experts and others to come together to seek long and short term policy solutions. Gov. Susana Martinez has the leadership to appoint a panel to do just that.

Meanwhile, we can still keep praying for rain.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.