Acequia communities brace for another brutally dry year

TALPA — The clatter of shovels scraping dirt, leaves and rocks filled the morning of March 21 in this historic settlement abutting the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Taos, heralding to the 700-some denizens of this densely packed community the reliable return of acequia cleaning season in New Mexico.

Less certain was whether the fruit of that labor — water — would flow sufficiently from the head gate of the Acequia Madre del Río Chiquito this spring to feed the many fruit trees, small farms and backyard gardens scattered across Talpa and communities nearby.

More than 60 water rights holders, or parciantes, climbed into the ditch earlier in the season than normal that Saturday amid a historic heat wave, following the dry channel toward the Río Chiquito, which flowed with a meager early-spring snowmelt from the western slopes of these southern Rockies.

Parciantes along the hundreds of acequias that crisscross northern New Mexico are concerned that the yield from a record-low snowpack this winter won’t be enough to irrigate lands that have depended on these manmade water systems for centuries.

Here in Talpa, residents rely on the Acequia Madre del Río Chiquito and the local reservoir to run water to keep roughly 829 acres green and growing.

“It don’t look too good,” said Tommy Tafoya, a generational Talpa resident and founder of the local community center and library. “Hopefully we get some rain. We’re going to run it tomorrow and see what we get.”

Tafoya, an expert adobe builder, grows peas, corn and navas on his family’s land. Down the road from him, Wilbert Archuleta has been growing squash on land that’s been in his family for generations.

“It’s the lifeline of New Mexico,” Archuleta told the Journal, standing in a section of the acequia lined with trees and low houses.

Barking neighborhood dogs wagged their tails and peered into the dusty ditch, looking for handouts from the workers as they ate lunch in the shade.

“These folks are out here working hard today,” Archuleta added. “I’m going behind the crews to make sure that the ditch is cleaned up to satisfaction, so that the water flows down freely.”

At an annual meeting this month, Taos County Extension Agent Will Jaremko Wright told acequia parciantes, commissioners and mayordomos to expect early and low water flows similar to last spring, which also saw rapid snowmelt after an exceptionally warm, dry winter.

“It was really bleak,” said Judy Torres, executive director of the Taos Valley Acequia Association. “Last year, we were really saved by the monsoon season, which came early. So that’s what we’re praying for again this year.”

If  a preliminary summer forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s is to be believed, those prayers may be answered.

The report predicts that a La Niña pattern, which has contributed to severe aridity across the Southwest for two consecutive winters, will likely shift toward an El Niño pattern by June — the typical start of New Mexico’s monsoon season.

“Everything I'm hearing does sound positive in terms of the analogs transitioning from a La Niña into an El Niño,” Clay Anderson, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, told the Journal this week as temperatures hit triple digits in some parts of the state. He said the local office was working to complete its own forecasting report, set to be released later this spring.

In the meantime, many growers in the state’s rural areas are bracing themselves for a stunted spring growing season, when seeding crops in fertile soil depends on healthy water flows.

Mayordomos, or the ditch superintendents parciantes elect, opened head gates all across the north this month, but they know the initial rush of water into acequias may not last.

“This is a wildly bad year for us,” said Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association. “I cannot overstate how dry it is, and this is going to be for a second year in a row. We got almost no snow here in Mora, and the soil is very dry.”

Garcia said snowpack on the eastern slopes of the Sangre de Cristos this year was roughly 1% of average, leaving an anemic spring water flow for parciantes in the area. 

Those same water users are still feeling the effects of the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, which burned 341,471 acres of forest in San Miguel, Mora and Taos counties between early April and late June of 2022 after two Forest Service fire treatments grew out of control and then merged.

The largest recorded wildfire in New Mexico history, the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire denuded massive swaths of watershed of forest growth, causing sediment runoff into acequias during the rainy season.

Similarly, Ruidoso residents saw deadly flash floods last summer, which experts have largely attributed to the post-fire effects of the 2024 South Fork Fire.

“The fire disaster and the flooding disasters add a whole other layer of hardship on top of the drought and water scarcity that we’re seeing,” Garcia said. “There’s no way to keep that silt out of the acequias.”

But Acequia leaders are learning to adapt to lengthening stretches of climate change-driven drought, shifting centuries old paradigms established by Puebloan Natives and Spanish settlers in New Mexico.

In Taos, one of the oldest ditches is believed to be the Acequia de los Lovatos, estimated to be 300 years old — dug not long before dozens of others were carved into the Taos Valley by ancestors of many parciantes still maintaining them today.

The Taos Valley Acequia Association, a nonprofit, maintains governance over 54 acequias that serve an estimated 15,000 parciantes in Taos County.

“In Taos, there are so many acequias, and several share the same stream,” Garcia said. “They have water sharing customs that go way back about how they divide the water on the river, but those only work if you have water.

“When you have very little,” she added, “those traditions that are based on experience and generational knowledge may not work like they did in the past.”

When he moved to Talpa nearly 60 years ago, Rory Kenward said his land was all but barren, but restoring its irrigation system made an “oasis” shaded by apricot trees.

“There are trees there now that didn’t exist, and so many things the water does that you can’t do with a hose,” he said not far from the head gate of the Acequia Madre del Río Chiquito, which winds up into the foothills of Carson National Forest. “It’s almost miraculous what good irrigation will do.”

John Miller is the Albuquerque Journal’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.