Water Matters! – Details, episodes & analysis

This week, Rin and John talk about flows on the Rio Grande, planning for a new federal river management project south of Socorro, groundwater contamination questions, and the future of federal clean water regulation.

Rio Grande

With the irrigation season over and the Rio Grande’s riparian vegetation shutting down for the winter, river flows are up through Albuquerque. But the biggest reason for the high flows is the annual Rio Grande Compact accounting exercise, as water stored in Abiquiu reservoir for the six Middle Rio Grande Pueblos, but not needed, is moved down to Elephant Butte Reservoir.

To track the flows, the USGS measurement gage at Central Avenue is Rin and John’s go-to information source: Rio Grande at Albuquerque, NM - USGS-08330000

And to get the best report on current river conditions, we recommend Anne Marken’s monthly presentations to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District Board of Directors. The audio recordings, including Anne’s slides, are here, and once the meeting minutes are posted, you’ll get a great written summary.

Lower San Acacia Reach

Reclamations draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Lower San Acacia Reach Improvements project is here. There will be two public meetings on the draft:

• January 7, 2026 from 5 to 7 p.m. MT at the Erna Fergusson Public Library,  3700 San Mateo Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87110.
• January 8, 2026 from 5 to 7 p.m. MT at the Socorro Public Library, 401 Park St, Socorro, NM, 87801.

Groundwater

• SourceNM reporting on Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon water contamination
•  Geologist Kate Zeigler’s report on water contamination
• Water Protection Advisory Board reports on Kirtland fuel spill

Waters of the United States (WOTUS!)

• WOTUS comment link
•  WOTUS definition update

Guest: John Fleck

A decade ago, the Utton Center's Writer in Residence John Fleck published his book Water is For Fighting Over and Other Myths About Water in the West, an exploration of water governance in the Colorado River Basin. Amid an often pessimistic literature, led by iconic titles that Fleck read as a young journalist - Mark Reisner's Cadillac Desertand Philip Fradkin's A River No More, among others - Water is For Fighting Over offered an optimistic narrative, stories of a governance structure adapting to scarcity and change, alongside communities thriving as they adapted to a future with less water.

The Utton Center's Rin Tara read Water is For Fighting Over as a college student, and it influenced the direction of their life, pursuing a law degree studying water law and policy and now working with Fleck at the Utton Center on the challenges of the Colorado River's future.

For this special episode of Water Matters, recorded at a time of deep uncertainty, conflict, and what some characterize as crisis on the Colorado River, Tara and Fleck look back at the book - what it said, what it got right, and what it got wrong - as they discuss the past, present, and future of the Colorado River.

Guest:  Diane Agnew of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority

With one of the worst winter snowpacks on record, New Mexico’s water supply forecasts for 2025 look grim. Can we avoid the apocalypse? The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Rin Tara and John Fleck talk to Diane Agnew of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority about adapting to the realities of a changing climate.

At a time in early spring when the Rio Grande should be rising, swollen with snowmelt, the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is shrinking instead. In a good year river water imported across the Continental Divide from Colorado can meet the majority of Albuquerque’s drinking water needs. But not this year. By May, Albuquerque will likely have to turn off its river water diversions, falling back to the use of water pumped from the aquifer beneath the city, explains Agnew, Albuquerque’s water rights manager.

While the news is stark, the taps will keep flowing. And there are hopeful signs about the collaboration needed for the community to get through a water short future, including collaboration with the valley’s agricultural water users, served by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, to help stretch this year’s short supplies. It’s a demonstration that, in the face of challenges, we still have choices as a community about the kind of water future we want to have.

Resources:

• Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority Water 2120 long-range plan
• The San Juan-Chama Project
• Tracking the flow of the Rio Grande: real time US Geological Survey gage at Albuquerque’s Central Avenue Bridge

The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Water Matters! podcast looks at water and natural resources issues in New Mexico and beyond. Housed at the University of New Mexico School of Law, the Utton Transboundary Resources Center believes in the pursuit of well informed, collaborative solutions to our natural resource challenges. The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Sairis Perez-Gomez designed the podcast logo and wrote and performed our theme music and Student Research Assistant Francesca Glaspell produced this episode.

Rin Tara is a staff attorney specializing in water policy and governance at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center. They are primarily interested in questions of water management in the face of climate change. They have done work in riparian restoration, river connectivity, tribal water sovereignty, climate change adaptation, and water rights. They have authored several papers on topics related to the future of western water management.

John Fleck is Writer in Residence at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico School of Law; and Professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance in the University of New Mexico Department of Economics. The former director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program, he is the author of four books on water in the west, including the forthcoming history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande – Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City. 

Rin Tara and John Fleck discuss water conditions in New Mexico for the week of November 10.

Rin Tara and John Fleck discuss water conditions in New Mexico for the week of October 27.

A full interview episode will be available later this month.

Guest: Don Bustos, Santa Cruz Farms

Irrigated from the Acequia del Llano running across the upper end of his four acres outside Española, New Mexico, Don Bustos' Santa Cruz Farms feels as if it has been there as long as the land itself. A rambling walk through the farm follows ditches carrying the water past patches of asparagus and the last of the blackberries, down one side past some new herbs Bustos is experimenting with - a path the water has traveled for the 400 years this land has been watered in the same traditional way.

But farming in the same way his ancestors have for four centuries means that Santa Cruz Farms must be both traditional and a thoroughly modern institution - rooted in the acequia culture and small-scale organic growing, but also embodying the sort of ever-present adaptations that have always been at the heart of maintaining the institution of agriculture in a changing world. As Bustos explains, new crops, new markets, and new irrigation technologies have helped Santa Cruz Farms thrive.

Guest: Enrique Romero, head of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo division of the New Mexico Department of Justice

Acequias are a traditional irrigation practice with roots across the world. The inhabitants of New Mexico have used ditch irrigation since time immemorial, though the acequias used today took their present form about 400 years ago.

Enrique Romero, head of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo division of the New Mexico Department of Justice, explains the history and governance of New Mexican acequias and discusses the theme of querencia. 

Guest: Craig Allen

Formed in a series of volcanic eruptions between 1 and 2 million years ago, the Jemez Mountains dominate the cultural and environmental history of central New Mexico. 

For more than four decades, forest ecologist Craig Allen has studied them, engaging in what has come to be known as “place-based ecology,” with deep roots in what the Nuevo Mexicanos would call “querencia” – a deep love and sense of place. 

The resulting of Craig’s passion is a vast body of scientific work that shed light on the impact of climate change on a forest landscape. The results also reflect a deeply personal journey for Allen, as aridity and fire change a place he loves.

New Mexico’s summer monsoon is upon us. The rainy season began the last week of June, bringing moist air north from the Gulf of California – pumping up flows in drying rivers, wetting forested landscapes and in the process reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires, and perhaps most importantly bringing the visceral joy that of rain. 

Streaming up through the mountains of central Mexico, the moisture from what scientists call the “North American Monsoon” brings 50 percent or more of the annual precipitation to many areas of the southwest, from Tucson and Phoenix up through Albuquerque. 

New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande responds, with monsoon rains temporarily lifting up flows in an otherwise drying river. 

Winter snows falling on the mountain watersheds upstream of us provide the bulk of the water supply for people and ecosystems, concentrated into river valleys as they flow downstream. But monsoon rains add a critical piece of the weather and climate puzzle as communities of the West work to adapt to climate change. 

Guest: Paul Tashjian, Director of Freshwater Conservation for Audubon Southwest

The Middle Rio Grande is home to not only a myriad of species, but also to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD). At first blush, environmental water uses, and agricultural water uses may appear to be in conflict, but the truth is more complicated. 

This month Water Matters hosts Paul Tashjian, Director of Freshwater Conservation for Audubon Southwest, to discuss the agroecosystem of the Middle Rio Grande.

Tashjian talks about the interconnected water uses throughout the MRGCD benefitted area and explains how closely intertwined the human and nonhuman communities in this region are. He also invites listeners to reach out to local nonprofits that may benefit from volunteer support, including Audubon Southwest, New Mexico Wild, The Nature Conservancy, and Bosque Ecological Monitoring Program. 

Our podcast is produced through the Utton Transboundary Resources Center, scripted by Rin Tara and John Fleck, and edited by Francesca Glaspell. Our music is written and performed by Sairis Perez-Gomez.