Update: Apologies to Norm Gaume and the Water Advocates for screwing up the link to the original quoted piece, which is shared here via Creative Commons copyright [CC BY SA].
Original post:
Terrific visualizations from the Water Advocates of the state of New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande:
Screenshot
Water Demands and the Effective Water Supply Stress Are Now Far Greater
Groundwater pumping from aquifers hydraulically connected to the Rio Grande exerts a persistent depletive effect on surface flows that was much lower during the 1948–1964 drought — making the effective water-supply stress today far greater than the raw Otowi flow numbers suggest. During 1948–1964, the Middle Rio Grande corridor had far fewer people and cities were much smaller: Albuquerque’s population in 1950 was roughly 97,000; today the metropolitan area exceeds 900,000. Municipal, industrial, agricultural, and riparian water demand is dramatically greater today. Decades of heavy withdrawals from both the alluvial aquifer and the underlying Santa Fe Group aquifer have drawn down water tables throughout the Middle Rio Grande Valley.
John,
The original materials published on the New Mexico Water Advocates website are available under a Creative Commons copyright [CC BY SA] that requires attribution. This post took two complex graphics out of the context of the NM Water Advocates article that presented them without attribution or link to the original article we posted on March 7, 2026.
Please provide the required attribution.
Norm
the nmwateradvocates.org link in your post is not working.
Federal agency halted producing monthly New Mexico water report due to staff limitations (Santa Fe New Mexican April 11, 2026) https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/federal-agency-halted-producing-monthly-new-mexico-water-report-due-to-staff-limitations/article_9e83278c-8b90-4703-9db0-12a5ae0b5dc4.html