I had a lovely afternoon yesterday walking alongside the Bear Canyon Arroyo in Albuquerque’s northeast heights, talking with fellow water nerds Katherine Yuhas and Amy Ewing, and watching water flow in New Mexico’s first operational aquifer storage and recovery project (behind a Google surveywall):

Nearly 3,000 gallons a minute of water began spurting from a pipe into Bear Canyon Arroyo in Albuquerque’s Northeast heights this week as part of New Mexico’s first operational project to store water in an underground aquifer.

“The whole goal of doing this is to store water when we have excess in the winter to build a drought reserve,” said Katherine Yuhas, water conservation officer for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority.