New Mexico is already locked in a decadelong legal battle with Texas over sharing flows in the Rio Grande, but now state officials are warning that water users must figure out how to use less — or risk even more litigation and potentially “extraordinarily painful” cuts to water supplies.
The New Mexico State Engineer’s Office, which regulates water rights in the state, is raising concerns over water use in the Middle Rio Grande, a nearly 200-mile-span from the Otowi Bridge in Santa Fe to the Elephant Butte Reservoir, a Bureau of Reclamation facility about 100 miles north of the Texas border.
“What we’re trying to do is get the major water users in New Mexico to curtail,” said Nat Chakeres, general counsel for the Office of State Engineer. “If we have to use a stick, we will, but we’d rather use carrots.”
The Rio Grande — which emerges from the southern Colorado Rockies and runs into New Mexico and then to Texas, where it forms the border with Mexico — is shared among its three states under a 1938 compact.
