Permanent Drought in New Mexico?

By Tom Ribe

New subdivisions of Arizona-style cookie-cutter houses are popping up in south Santa Fe like weeds after a summer rain. These houses seem to get built overnight and buyers seem to appear just as fast. A wrenching question must be asked; where will Santa Fe get water for ever more urban sprawl as the Southwest enters a super-drought worsened by global heating?

City governments everywhere like to approve endless amounts of new housing. Construction brings jobs (sometimes to locals) and new residents pay taxes and use local businesses. Big housing companies give campaign contributions to local politicians. Fading water supplies seem like distant abstractions in the political/business world until the wells and taps go dry.

Santa Fe is living on borrowed time with its water supply which comes from deep wells, from the Rio Grande, and from the fire-prone Santa Fe Watershed. The city bought up water rights from farmers in southern New Mexico so we could divert part of the Rio Grande into our supply. Yet wells supply a large part of our water, especially in the summer tourist season, while the Rio Grande is our main source the rest of the year. Legally, our ground water use is tied to our diverting the Rio Grande so there is no free lunch.

Too many people from Colorado to Mexico expect to get water from the Rio Grande and scientists know that climate change is shrinking the Rio Grande as drought grips our region and overall temperatures steadily rise over time. Cities like Santa Fe and Albuquerque compete with big users like the dairy and beef industries for Rio Grande water. Agriculture uses 85% of the water humans draw from the Rio Grande, much of it in southern Colorado where cattle feed fields lessens the river before it flows into New Mexico. Ranching on public lands strips vegetation from along streams which dry up, further shrinking the Rio Grande.

Climate change alone could drop the amount of water in the Rio Grande by a quarter by 2030 according to New Mexico State University. A dropping Rio Grande will mean less water in the aquifers below us and the Santa Fe River faces the same fate. At the same time researchers at UNM expect that a half to three quarters of a million more people may move to New Mexico by 2040. The coronavirus is driving people to leave big urban centers in California and elsewhere to find more rural settings. Urban refugees come to Santa Fe daily. We may welcome their money, but they will hasten an uncomfortable day of water reckoning.

A new study shows that normal wet and dry fluctuations in the Southwest become much more dramatic because of global warming. Megadrought grips our region. This is the driest time in the Southwest since the 1950s and the second driest our region has been in the last 2200 years. As temperatures climb, surface water evaporates, rain and snow diminish and our water supplies fade.

We can dispense with our fantasies that technology will save us – we can’t manufacture water and all the rivers are fully tapped out. New Mexico and Santa Fe specifically are in a time of strong leadership. This would be a good time for government to get serious about planning for permanent drought. The days of out-of-state companies building hundreds of houses to make a quick buck here should probably come to an end. Moreover, wasting water on feed for cattle in a desert could be the first water use to phase out.