2002 snowpack and runoff were terrible on the Rio Grande and San Juan. Think the San Juan Chama Project diverted about 6,000 acre-feet into the Rio Grande that year (normal would be between 80,0000 and 120,000 acre-feet. Heck, for Colorado on the mainstem Rio Grande, we had to negotiate a new delivery by Colorado to …
Continue reading ‘Quoting Rolf Schmidt-Petersen on water management in New Mexico in 2002’ »
I was crammed into the back seat of a Subaru wagon Friday, bouncing down the tail end of the last dirt road along New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande when the big marsh buggies emerged in the distance, blocking up the road’s end. In the lexicon of the river’s “maintainers,” we were somewhere around “River Mile …
I added the year to the title of this blog post for the search engines. Because what’s going on right now applies to a lot of years since I’ve been writing about this stuff at Inkstain. I’m gathering string today for the first Water Matters podcast of 2026 (available on Buzzsprout and wherever fine podcasts …
Continue reading ‘Expect another dry year (2026) on New Mexico’s Rio Grande’ »
Jack Schmidt on New Mexico water managers’ pushing 1,700 cfs down the Rio Grande in the middle of December to tidy up our annual Rio Grande Compact accounting: Thanks for the reminder of the tragedy of moving water at the wrong time of year when that water provides no ecological benefit. If that water were …
The Sunday bike ride included a brief detour to check out the river. The Rio Grande was flowing at 1,700 cfs, the highest sustained flows of the year, as water managers move water downstream to meet their annual Rio Grande Compact accounting goals. The “Happy Holidays” graffiti is, of course, there year ‘round. I love …
Continue reading ‘Happy Holidays From a Flowing Rio Grande’ »
It’s important to understand that the Rio Grande is not a natural system. It’s an engineered system. It’s managed on a daily basis by a consortium of agencies at all different levels of government plus municipal water users and irrigation districts. So partly, (drying is) a product of decisions. It is also clearly a product …
Total flow to date on the Rio Grande at Otowi is the lowest since 1964. Otowi is the place where the river leaves the upper valleys and enters the canyons that lie at the head of the valley of Albuquerque, what we in New Mexico call the “Middle Rio Grande.” The graph shows total …
Continue reading ‘The driest year on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande since 1964’ »
Enrique Romero joins Rin and I on Water Matters to discuss acequias and querencia. (This podcast thing is a blast!)
Autumnal equinox news briefs: I was on the phone in the front room of our house yesterday evening, facing east, as the setting sun dropped beneath the clouds after a short burst of rain. Rainbow. And the conversation, with the cousin of an old friend who died earlier this year, was rich. The Rio Grande …
Continue reading ‘A rainbow, a river, and the first cranes of fall’ »