Archive of posts filed under the New Mexico category.

To’Hajiilee water line groundbreaking: “an impossible project”

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With the obligatory shovels in pre-softened dirt, a group of political leaders from the Navajo Nation, New Mexico state and local government, and water agencies this morning (Wed. 5/15/2024) formally inaugurated a new pipeline being built to connect the Navajo community of To’Hajiilee to the 3.5 million gallon reservoir in the picture – clean, piped …

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Finding an alternative place to park Middle Rio Grande water options with El Vado Dam out of service

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Two key takeaways from Monday’s (May 13, 2024) Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board meeting: El Vado Dam, crucial for managing irrigation, municipal, and environmental water through New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande valley, will be out of service indefinitely – for many, many years. The vague structure of alternative storage options, using other existing dams, …

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El Vado Reservoir update on today’s (May 13, 2024) Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board agenda

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We’ll get an update on the status of El Vado Dam and related issues at this afternoon’s (Mon. 5/13/24) meeting of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s board of directors. This is an enormously consequential issue for Rio Grande flows through central New Mexico. The Meeting Today’s board meeting starts at 3 p.m. at the …

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Floating Albuquerque’s Rio Grande: notes on “naturalness”

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The Rio Grande is up through Albuquerque right now, swollen with spring snowmelt. But not for long. We may already have hit the runoff peak at a bit above 3,000 cubic feet per second in late April, and a friend who’s been cheerfully nagging me to float it with them talked me into locking down …

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Rapid snowmelt on New Mexico’s Rio Grande

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A recent rapid warmup has brought high flows to the Rio Grande through New Mexico. But with a modest snowpack sitting in the mountains to the north, that means we should expect the early rise to be followed by an early drop. Members of the Inkstain Rio Grande Rapid Response Team (IRGRRT) were busy over …

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The loss of El Vado: some followup

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A couple of followup notes related to last week’s post about the news on El Vado Dam on the Rio Chama, crucial to water management on New Mexico’s Rio Grande, thanks to my many alert and thoughtful Inkstain readers…. Rio Grande Compact Debt In the comments, Norm Gaume made a point that’s worth pulling out …

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The Loss of El Vado Dam

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The Bureau of Reclamation’s announcement at Monday’s meeting of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District that it is halting work on El Vado Dam repairs raises hugely consequential questions about water management in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley. The short explanation for the halt is that the current approach to repairing the 1930s-era dam …

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Otowi flow, without the log scale: 21st century peaks are ~half what they were in 1980-2000

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Alert Inkstain reader John correctly questions the impression left by the log scale I used last time ’round in my graph of flow at Otowi: [W]hile I appreciate the usefulness of logarithmic scales for being able to discern patterns at the low end of the flow range, it does somewhat hide the magnitude of the …

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Happy Rio Grande Spring Runoff!

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It is telling that I got excited when I noticed inflow into New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley approaching “normal”, which I now define as the median of 21st century flow. Our climate-altered world, y’all. A note on the evolution of the graph: I’ve added the “max” and “min” lines back. I dropped them because …

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