Cocoposts

Lessons from the 2013 #nmleg

The capitol building itself is a wondrous place. This year again I found myself walking round and round looking for a committee room that had disappeared. A friend remarked it would be a bad place for a bad acid trip. Look! That buffalo is coming out of the wall!

The final days of the session were a little stale and sad - like the last weekend of the State Fair when all the grass is brown and the animals are gone. The bills are like those 4-H livestock projects. A whole lot of work. Few trophies. They die.

Sitting in committee hearing rooms turned up interesting details and occasional spontaneous outbursts of sincere emotion. No less interesting were instances of calculated misdirection or omissions in testimony -  and the potent questions left hanging

How much gas or oil do we get for all that fresh groundwater?

And shouldn't water be worth more than oil? 

The major things:

1. New Mexico consistently overvalues engineers, businessmen and big construction projects and undervalues artists, teachers and intangible natural assets. It's all about the money. No less at the legislature. Probably more so. Treatment of water in a drought is one example. Water rights market wheeling and dealing is very hot right now. Many predict those who can not pay for water lawyers and hydro-geologists will be left high and dry. Small farmers. Small fish. Meanwhile big water pipeline projects with fat construction contracts will be justified with magical incantations.* Gila River? Go Fish.
 
2. The negative impacts of the oil and gas industry are denied, ignored and suppressed. To use water as an example again, the industry uses veritable buttloads of water and pollutes it as fast as they can frack. But the state doesn't track this water use at all. Nor do they know what's in it before it's disposed. Any bill considered 'unfavorable' to the industry is met with exhortations to stop 'antagonizing' oil and gas. This from legislators who proudly hail intimate ties to the business.

The sign by the door of the Senate press room calls it the 'Print Media Gallery' which could imply exclusion of a blogger or social mediaist. But like a lot of other things in the Roundhouse the sign does not reflect reality or truth. Or it would read, 'Senate Staff Lunch Gallery.'

*Jobs, jobs, jobs- the magic words for any proposal that might otherwise lack merit.

Fine Fine New Mexico - HB286

The Texas Legislature is considering raising their penalties for oil and gas violations from $10,000 per day to $200,000. New Mexico's HB286 would raise the daily maximum penalty from $1000 to $10,000. I dislike Texas comparisons as much as the next New Mexican, but come on. That makes a fine of $1000 per day for violators that pollute land and water a new new low.

HB286 is scheduled to be heard by the House Judiciary Committee this morning.

Can’t Buy It Back - Water Update

I still don’t get how you can buy your way out of drought. Seems like that’s what a couple of bills are about. SB440 is for $120 million for the lower Rio Grande and SB462 would give the Carlsbad Irrigation District $2.5 million . But let's face it. No amount of money for water rights is going to make it rain. Unhappily for all of us, whether we’re in denial or not, climate change means we should set policy for big water use reductions and super-efficiencies.

It might help if we didn't pollute so much of it.

Water Right - Land Grant Parallel

Water rights remind me of land grants in that similar frantic profiteering kind of way. The legal maneuvering and gamesmanship over land in 19th century New Mexico is legendary. Multiple deals over many years gradually and nearly invisibly severed the resource from communities in the interest of privatization, subdivision and sale.  

Though historic community ditches and acequias are exempt from such administration, the result of other water transfer profiteering and speculation in the end could be the same as the land grant outcome - incremental distancing and eventual alientation of existing and future communities from what it takes to survive. Land. Water.

Roundhouse of Cards

Damn it. I just love pecans.

Surface water users and the river itself, are the first to get screwed in a drought. Shortfalls are already hitting farmers and the river ecosystem on the lower Rio Grande. They’ve been making up the difference with three solid years of heavy groundwater pumping to keep the pecan trees alive. The pumping is further reducing flows required downstream. That’s very serious and has everyone in a Texas-sized tizzy.


Reducing city use isn’t on the table. It isn’t even in the kitchen. None of the legislative proposals to meet drought challenges specifically include reducing municipal or industrial demand. On the contrary, those are viewed almost unquestioningly as economic engines of the state. The State Engineer is empowered to speed such water transfers.

There is a fundamental bias against desert agriculture, even agriculture in the river valley where it has existed for thousands of years. The ‘antiquated agriculture” construct is at the heart of water right transfers. The belief says we don’t need local food and it isn’t economic to grow it. This view nests nicely with memes like how new construction equals economic development and people are more important than a tiny fish.   

Suggestions to “live within our means” and become more accountable for water use and misuse are met with a metaphoric snort of derision, like a Memorial maybe. Meanwhile elaborate pipeline schemes gain momentum.

Attempting to move more water when there is less water to move, seems foolhardy. As do some of our assumptions about what constitutes a healthy economy. Have the building industry and water marketeers dominated the water transfer conversation to the detriment of agricultural interests and native river ecosystems?

You might well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

Pipe Dreams - New Mexico Water Transfers at the Roundhouse

Supporters say HB19 just clarifies how leasing water constitutes a ‘beneficial use.’ Water owner at point A leases a groundwater right to someone at point B. The water can’t be used at point B so instead of forfeiture (which the SEO said they never do) or reversion (which might happen after four years) the water can be leased again for use at point C. None of this is actual water until a thirsty city, or whatever entity can afford to, buys and builds water infrastructure to use the rights.

Cautious reading says that C could be anywhere - allowing lease holder at B to “shop” the use - or speculate. (Say it ain’t so.) It also may leave the owner A without much of a say in the matter, which could be why there is still some opposition from cattle and wool growers.

Like HB181, SB309 deals with water leasing for streamflow and wildlife which sounds so nice. Because of broad definitions and the absence of criteria it is at least conceivable this wildlife water could be used throughout that steam system for any beneficial use. So water leased for fish could be leased again for compact deliveries downstream. Is that wrong? Well it’s innovative and it isn’t just about the fish.

Moving Water Uphill to Money

Cross-posted en El Grito

New Mexico’s farmers, ranchers and housing subdividers have probably been the first to understand what’s at stake with water.  They have skin in the game. They’re represented at the Roundhouse. So are the water speculators, those brave ‘visionaries’ inside the water sale, lease and transfer game.

Water transfers are considered a solution to water supply and demand challenges. Bills at the Legislature this session strongly support such a view. Whether you agree with the approach or not, there are interesting implications. For one thing, transferring paper water around by selling and leasing water rights to thirsty desperate entities has grown very profitable. But building pipelines, pumps, canals, and dams to actually move wet water is  a very expensive public cost.

Senator Cervantes has introduced SB440 to provide funding for lower Rio Grande water purchases, among other things. It begs the question of where the water would come from.  Coincidentally, I’m so sure, there are a couple of pipeline projects in the Capital Outlay List:

SOUTHERN NM WATER PIPELINE GILA-SAN FRANCISCO 25,000,000 to plan, design and construct a water conveyance pipeline from the Gila-San Francisco water basin to the Las Cruces metropolitan area…

SOUTHERN NM WATER PIPELINE SALT/TULAROSA/CARLSBAD 75,000,000 to plan, design and construct a water conveyance pipeline from the Salt, Tularosa, Carlsbad and other water basins in Dona Ana, Otero and Eddy counties.

The Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) has done a lot planning involving a lot of people with interest in the future of the Gila River.  A pipeline was not part of that planning.  Is the Office of the State Engineer and the ISC ignoring the extensive and expensive process they established to spend money and use this water? Is the Legislature?

The Watchdog’s coverage of SB440 noted the Office of the State Engineer and ISC statement: “As more time passes, and water problems increase in magnitude statewide, existing regional water plans are outdated and useless in addressing emerging water crises.” So updating the plans instead of ignoring them should be a top priority. Or you might think so.

SB13, another Cervantes bill, would give $400,000 to the ISC for planning in the lower Rio Grande. Nice and timely for any transferring but it doesn’t appear to fit with a coordinated process to update all 16 regional plans. The Legislature hasn’t funded water planning in five years. But that hasn’t slowed infrastructure project requests – requests that are supposed to be prioritized through water plans – begging the question of how priorities are being set now.

Details, details.

The State Engineer has the sole power to make transfer decisions and he is supposed to take  ‘public welfare’ into account. That’s a sticky wicket since the stalled water planning process was intended to define what that means, along with how much water there might be to transfer in the first place. The State Engineer said water administration involves ‘multiple cans of worms.’ Better go fishing soon while the river is still there.

Dry and Desperate - New Mexico Drought

Cross posted in El Grito

It’s bad and we’re all lawyered up.

That’s a good tweet-length description of the State Engineer’s information about water given to a joint hearing of Senate Conservation, Judiciary and Finance committees on January 24th. The hearing was sparsely attended but Conservation Chair, Senator Wirth assured the larger audience in the gallery that many Senators were listening in their offices. (Sure they were.) State Engineer, Scott Verhines and the Director of the Interstate Stream Commission, Estevan Lopez, described the offices and function before Conservation Bureau Director, John Longworth presented sobering drought statistics. It was dry, but not nearly as dry as  New Mexico.

Water is the most important issue we talk the least about. Senator Peter Wirth

New Mexico water law is unique and the complexities are great and growing. Scarcity, not surprisingly, is increasing costs and conflict. The Engineer estimated the value of water rights in New Mexico at $15-16 billion dollars.  Later, Senator John Smith quipped that the only thing we have less of in New Mexico than water is money. As for conflict, it’s epic. The attorney noted only some of the multiple lawsuits in federal and state court. Litigation issues are scheduled to will be presented again to the Senate Finance Committee on January 31st at 1:30, Room 322. It’ll be interesting to see just how much all that water lawyering costs.

Drought got the most focus. John Longsworth presented tragic temperature, precipitation and reservoir data. Over 95% of our state is in moderate to extreme drought. Reservoirs are very low with Elephant Butte at 7% capacity. 2012 temperatures were the warmest in 118 years and the last 24 months are the driest in 120 years. Senator Phil Griego later described the crisis in southern New Mexico saying that more than 13,000 acres of farmland on the Pecos River have been abandoned and that people are so desperate some are stealing hay.

Wet years have a way of covering up a multitude of water management sins. Drought exposes them for all to see. John Fleck, ABQ Journal 

Among the consequences of drought to Verhine’s Office are even more litigation and more complicated administrative decisions. He lauded his staff’s intelligence and work ethic saying they carefully consider long term  and unintended consequences of applications. That’s good, because there are deep consequences to the trend of transferring water to the highest bidders. Pressures on the State Engineer for favorable rulings are unlikely to abate, even if the drought does, and there is no end in sight to lawsuits.

Speaking of which, the San Augustin Ranch LLC proposal for a water transfer from Catron County to the Rio Grande was mentioned. A court had upheld the Engineer’s initial denial of the permit but that decision was just appealed.  The case entailed the largest administrative hearing ever conducted by any State Engineer with 900 protests to the transfer. It is not going away.

Solve, not fight

That’s the State Engineer’s mantra, he said. Toward the close of the hearing Senator Wirth suggested that might be a good goal for Legislature.

Water Planning: Rinse and Repeat

'A water right is a hunting license not a warranty deed.

Overheard at the 19th Annual New Mexico Water Dialogue Thursday, January 10, 2013

The official title was 'Reviving Water Planning: Successes, Challenges and Opportunities' but I prefer mine. One overwhelming point that stuck with me from the day: hard choices are going to need to be made about water. And those choices can be made more equitably through water planning - a collaborative effort involving varied interests.

There were a couple of elephants in the already well-populated room at the Pueblo Cultural Center. One was called-out by an attendee - the  City, more accurately but irritatingly, the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, to whom we are to be eternally grateful for not having included 'wastewater' in their name. The 'they' there is actually nobody but well-paid staff and a fluid mix of representatives from the member governments. It's a structure, I believe, designed to distance it's member board from accountability and its actions from public transparency. The elephantine status comes from being the biggest water user in the State.

Water Happy-Talk

"A rainy winter in the Southwest has bought time for Las Vegas. According to The Arizona Republic, water levels in Lake Mead are up five feet, forestalling water rationing … until 2015, anyway. Last fall, Lake Mead’s surface had fallen to seven feet above the point where emergency measures would have to be instituted.

Don’t let the happy-talk local papers fool you: Lake Mead is still at least 125 feet below its 1999 level, an alarming 40% of capacity. Of course, to the hear the most powerful person in the Silver State — Southern Nevada Water Authority führer Pat Mulroy — tell it, we don’t need no stinking rationing … just more giant pipelines to suck other people’s aquifers dry."

From Stiffs and Goerges, a Las Vegas blog.