Ridenbaugh Press/Water Rights

The Bureau of Reclamation has completed a three-year long environmental assessment on the impacts of providing funding for construction of the Eastern New Mexico Rural Water System Project, and issued a finding of no significant impact on the environment.

The Eastern New Mexico Rural Water System is intended to pipe water from Ute Reservoir in northeastern New Mexico to serve the domestic water needs of approximately 60,000 people in the communities of Clovis, Elida, Grady, Melrose, Portales and Texico; Curry and Roosevelt counties; and Cannon Air Force Base.

“Reclamation is proud to be involved in a project of this magnitude that will serve to benefit many people in eastern New Mexico,” said Albuquerque Area Office Manager Mike Hamman after signing the Finding of No Significant Impact on January 28. “This document was one of the last remaining steps before construction could begin on this project.”

Reclamation was authorized by the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 to provide federal funds as appropriated by Congress to the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority for the construction of the pipeline, intake structure, storage, pumping, water treatment, and delivery facilities. Preliminary cost estimates for the project are approximately $436 million, of which the federal government portion is 75 percent; the state of New Mexico’s portion is 15 percent; and the ENMWUA’s portion is 10 percent.

The project area considered in the EA, prepared in cooperation with the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, includes portions of Quay, Curry and Roosevelt Counties. The project would deliver 16,450 acre-feet of water annually from Ute Reservoir to the participating communities to meet a portion of current and future water supply needs. The planning horizon considered in this EA is to 2060, which is within the normal range for water supply projects.

Hidalgo County near the southern tip of Texas (home to the city of McAllen, one of the country’s fastest-growing) is in arid country but sees a lot of water: Storm water that runs in mass quantity through its drainage system, on the way east to the nearby (but not adjacent) Gulf of Mexico.

The idea arose: What if the county captured much of the water flowing through that system, ran through a wastewater treatment facility, and then sold it to the parched nearby communities?

Hidalgo County Drainage District No. 1 now is weighing exactly that option. Water engineer Deren Li said the drainage facilities have developed into what amount to untapped rivers, and could become a strong resource in the area. Li has been asked by the district to develop the details of a proposal for capturing and re-using the water.

There isn’t yet a specific schedule for development.

[see McAllen (TX) Monitor, January 17]

Data from earth-observing Landsat satellites plays a central role in a new, award-winning type of mapping that tracks water use.
Water-use maps help save taxpayer money by increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of public decisions involving water – for instance, in monitoring compliance with legal water rights. The maps are especially important in dry western states where irrigated agriculture accounts for about 85 percent of all water consumption.

Using Landsat imagery supplied by the U.S. Geological Survey in combination with ground-based water data, the Idaho Department of Water Resources and the University of Idaho developed a novel method to create water-use maps that are accurate to the scale of individual fields. The Ash Institute at Harvard University recently cited Idaho’s original design for these maps as an outstanding innovation in American government.

“The USGS Landsat archive, dating back to1972, has proven to be a versatile source of consistent data about land surface conditions,” said Bryant Cramer, USGS Associate Director for Geography. “This advance by the Idaho water monitoring team is both brilliant and practical. Looking forward, it’s indicative of what researchers in many countries can accomplish with the data.”

The value of the USGS Landsat archive was endorsed by Richard Allen of the University of Idaho, one of the honored team members. “Archival support from USGS gave Idaho researchers the means to determine changes in water consumption over time by agricultural, residential and wildland systems,” he said. “These historical records were indispensable in calibrating many aspects of current data.”

As agricultural irrigation needs and swelling city populations amplify demand for scarce water supplies, water management strategy has been forced to shift from increasing water supply to more effectively managing water use at sustainable levels. Thus, accurate water-use mapping is critical. The Landsat-based method can be as much as 80 percent more accurate than traditional measurement methods.

With initial assistance from NASA, the Idaho Department of Water Resources began cooperating with the University of Idaho in 2000 to develop a computer model, METRIC (Mapping EvapoTranspiration at high Resolution with Internalized Calibration), to estimate and map water use in vegetated areas. The mapping method has since been adopted in other states including Montana, California, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Texas, Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon.

The objective nature of the technique assists these states in negotiating Native American water rights, assessing urban water transfers, managing aquifer depletion, monitoring water right compliance, and protecting endangered species. Internationally, Spain, South Africa and Morocco have already begun to employ Landsat-based water-use maps. (See a U.S. Geological Survey report.)

The Las Vegas Sun has out today an extensive overview of the battle between Las Vegas water interests, spearheaded by the Souther Nevada Water Authority, and resident of eastern Nevada, where some of the targeted water is located.

The article was spun around an August 20 hearing on the most recent pipeline proposal. It said that:

Facing scores of angry eastern Nevadans saying their way of life was being placed in jeopardy, the water authority’s board of directors instructed its staff on Thursday to continue working on permits to build a 300-plus-mile pipeline so water from the Great Basin can be drawn south.

The vote and the four-hour hearing that accompanied it were unnecessary. But it was a public demonstration that the water authority’s general manager, Pat Mulroy, had gathered a formidable posse — one with the political clout and financial backing to counter the mounting opposition to her proposed pipeline from White Pine County.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on September 20, heard testimony in favor of legislation to continue restoration efforts on one of New Mexico’s largest tributaries to the Rio Grande. The bill reauthorizes the Río Puerco Watershed Management Program, which Bingaman first wrote into law in 1996. Over the past decade, the Rio Puerco Watershed Management Program has helped restore much of the 7,000 square-mile degraded watershed.
The Rio Puerco Watershed Management program authorized the creation of the Rio Puerco Management Committee—a panel comprised of federal and state agencies, Native American Indian tribes, local governments and private entities. Congress has provided the committee with more than $6 million over the past decade to develop and implement proposals for watershed rehabilitation.
The Río Puerco Management Committee has become one of the most effective collaborative land management efforts in the Southwest. Among the committee’s accomplishments is a project to return the Río Puerco to its original streambed, originally altered to accommodate the construction of State Highway 44, now U.S. Highway 550, in the late 1960s. According to the BLM, the channel became a primary contributor of erosion and sediment in the river’s main stem, and even began advancing toward U.S. 550, threatening the highway’s stability. The large-scale project is one of only three in the entire country like it.
The legislation authorizes funding for the Río Puerco Management Committee over the next ten years.
According to the BLM, while the Río Puerco contributes less than ten percent of the total water to the Río Grande, it represents the primary source of sedimentation entering the Upper Río Grande. The Río Puerco contributes the majority of the silt entering Elephant Butte Reservoir about 65 miles downstream of its confluence with the Río Grande.
U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman and U.S. Senator Pete Domenici

Nevada water officials filed legal papers early in August saying that the federal officials who have used water for the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain were violating state-federal agreements and have to stop that use.
The legal case open significant new questions for the federal project, which is reliant on use of Nevada water.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the federal Department of energy “has been using water for at least a year in violation of the understanding the parties had. And now, incredibly, DOE continues to use Nevada’s water for a purpose outside the agreement and unsupported in federal law.”
The new filing is part of a state attempt in federal district court to obtain a retraining order against federal use of the water – part, in turn, of a larger effort against development of the nuclear project overall.
The Department of Energy has maintained that it is operating within the terms of the federal-state agreement and that loss of the water will cost the federal agency a large amount of money.
At hearing on the issue August 15, District Judge Roger Hunt appeared critical of the federal effort, questioning the abruptly increased speed by the Department of Energy in moving ahead on the project. He also said the agency had ignored state orders to quit using the water, which is governed by the state.
Senator Harry Reif od Nevada weighed in with his state’s water agency. He told the Review Journal that “The Department of Energy, for lack of a better description, has cheated us for years now. And we want the world to know about this . . . Quite frankly, we’re waiting until Bush is out of office. Once he’s gone, we’re in really good shape.”
[see Las Vegas Review Journal, August 1, August 16, August 24.]