The confluence of the Rio Salado and the Rio Grande

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A small flowing river to the right, a dry arroyo to the left, a railroad bridge crossing the dry arroyo, a mountain in the distance, a bicycle laying in the sand in the foreground.

SAN ACACIA – It’s three river miles upstream from the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s San Acacia Diversion Dam to the Rio Grande’s confluence with the Rio Salado, but the river’s twisty here. It wasn’t much more than two miles of bike ride along the MRGCD’s Unit 7 Drain service road to get to the railroad bridge over the Salado. Although not a bike ride the whole way. Super sandy. Lots of walk-a-bike.

Newspaper headline: "New Mexico Towns Swept Out by Flood"

rampage

From the Salado, it’s another eight miles (again river miles, but less twisty) to the Rio Puerco.

The sand is typical of the Salado’s coarse-grained sediment load. The Puerco tends to be more silts and clays. Together, they remind us that rivers bring with them more than water.

On August 13, 1929, both the Puerco and the Salado were flashing together. The flow on the Salado that day was later estimated at 27,000 cubic feet per second. The Puerco’s flow was estimated at 31,000 cubic feet per second. The Rio Grande today when I rode out there was maybe ~250 cfs, based on the gage upstream at Bernardo. The Salado, as you can see, was 0 cfs, which is what it almost always is. Until it isn’t.

The flood of August 13, 1929, seems to have destroyed the community of San Acacia (that’s what the breathless newspaper accounts of the day all said, Further Research Needed). Among the losses was the home of Philip Zimmer, patriarch of a storied San Acacia family. Here’s the Associated Press:

One of the tragedies of the floods was the destruction of the famous Zimmer library of antique Spanish books which Mr. Zimmer had found years ago on Indian hill. The library was estimated to be worth $50,000 and it could not be replaced. The priceless volumes were ruined by the flood waters.

The Zimmer estate was one of the finest in this section of the Rio Grande valley and had one of the largest orchards in the valley.

The story of the 1929 destruction of San Marcial, 47 river miles downstream, gets most of the storytelling love, but I’m interested in San Acacia. Geomorphology is always destiny for river communities, and in this regard San Acacia is in no way unique. But it’s presence at the mouth of a narrow canyon, just downstream from two big, silty Rio Grande tributaries, is a great story I’d like to figure out how to tell.

It’s a narrow gap between two volcanic bluffs, maybe 600 feet wide at its narrows. Through this gap flows the railroad (Can I skip all the mergers and acquisitions and just call it “the Santa Fe”?); the MRGCD’s Unit 7 Drain; the river’s main channel.

The MRGCD’s San Acacia Diversion Dam forms a low 660-foot plug across the gap, and the piles of dirt attest to the contributions of the Puerco and the Salado. Back in September 2013 I saw the river at 9,000 cfs here, the biggest flows since 1985, the Puerco and Salado both dumping flash flood waters into a roiling muddy power that is part of what draws me back again and again. I can’t fathom 31k cfs from the Puerco and another 27k from the Salado.

Downstream of the gap, you’ve got the Santa Fe, the Rio Grande’s main channel, and the headings for the Socorro Main Canal and the Low Flow Conveyance Channel. Splitting off the Socorro Main is the Alamillo ditch (which provided a convenient escape route on today’s ride from a very fit and hard-working dog displeased with my presence).

The Alamillo heads due west away from the river, across a gorgeous fan of Salado and Puerco sediment, green with alfalfa as I rode along the ditchbank today. The land, known as Indian Hill Farms, was until recently owned by the late Corky Herkenhoff, one of Philip Zimmer’s descendants.

Map Indian Hill Farms, with various areas marked off for different types of habitat.

The once and future habitat of San Acacia.

KRQE had a story about Pattern Energy, the company building the big SunZia renewable energy power line, buying Indian Hill Farms with plans to convert it into habitat as mitigation for power line construction. At a Sandia Labs presentation last fall, Pattern’s Jeremy Turner shared preliminary plans for the conversion of Indian Hill Farms to saltgrass and cottonwoods and savannah.

Before his death, I spent time with Corky piecing together some of the history of Indian Hill Farms, originally planning a chapter for Ribbons of Green, the book Bob Berrens and I were writing about the Rio Grande and the making of Albuquerque. It was fascinating stuff, but it fell out of the narrative as our geographic scope shrank between envisioning the book and actually putting words to paper.

As I play with ideas for the next book, I’ve got a long string on my hard drive about the floods of September 2013, a text from Corky telling me he’d driven up to check on the Salado and that it was flashing, hard. We knew the Puerco was flashing as well, it’s got a gage, but Corky had to drive up to look to see what the Salado was doing.

The thread on my hard drive includes data from the USGS about the volume of sediment that blasted into the Rio Grande’s main channel that September day – A LOT – and visceral feel of watching that thick soupy sludge roaring over the San Acacia Diversion Dam, the way I kept running into other water nerds down there that day. We all had to see it.

Corky, who grew up hanging out summers at his grandma’s San Acacia farm before taking over the operation as a young man in the 1960s, told me one time that the Salado and the Puerco had distinctive smells when they were flashing, that he could tell the difference. I asked a couple of Conservancy District guys at the San Acacia Dam, just down the road from Corky’s farm, if they could tell the difference by the smell. They said “no.” I told them they Corky told me he could tell the difference. They smiled and nodded. They believed Corky could.

Black and white picture of an old pump, pumping water into an irrigation ditch.

Circa 1904, one of the first irrigation pumps in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley.

There was a tenderness in the way Corky pronounced “Salado” that always charmed me – “suh-*low*”, almost rhyming with “cow” but with a barest shadow of the “d” somehow tucked into the middle of the second syllable. It suggested an intimacy with the river, with the place. Not a lot of people love the Salado, or even know that it exists.

On one of my last visits, Corky had a bunch of old pictures to show me, including this one, of his great-grandfather Philip Zimmer’s first groundwater well, circa 1904. Looking this evening at the New Mexico Office of State Engineer’s water rights maps, I see a permitted irrigation well on the northeast corner of Indian Hill Farms. I don’t understand its lineage, I have no idea if there is a legal water rights tendril extended back to Zimmer’s 1904 well. Further Research Needed. But there is a tendril nevertheless, a storytelling thread worth tugging.

What matters more for that thread is the current owner: Sunzia Transmission, Llc, 1088 Sansome St., San Francisco, CA, 94111.

 

 

Upon the Retirement of Bob Snow, May 15, 2025

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The following is signed by a stunningly long list of folks:

The Colorado River Basin will feel the loss of Bob Snow with his retirement from the Solicitor’s Office at the Department of the Interior.  His more than forty-year presence in the most impactful and most difficult conversations in the Basin has been both a comfort to those involved and a catalyst of judicious solutions.  It is not an exaggeration to say that Bob is the most respected person of this era in the arena of western water law and policy. When the definitive legal history of the Colorado River is written, Bob Snow will be among the heroes.

 

Bob’s initial work as a stream gager with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Water Resources Division provided the technical basis for his deep understanding of the plumbing, capabilities, and limitations of the Colorado River system.  After USGS, Bob returned to law school, earning his degree in 1994, and starting at Interior’s prestigious Honors program shortly thereafter.  During his legal career, Bob has demonstrated an incredible ability to consider and honor the interests of the whole basin and all its various constituent parts, always ensuring that his clients’ interests were protected.  He knows the history and the legal structure in such detail that he can think through the consequences of various proposals, whether intended or not.  He has been adept in finding ways to thread the needle – to get both sides of a controversy what they need and what they want.  As a result, he has proven to be amazingly effective at crafting compromises, a trait much admired and valued by his colleagues.  Bob’s career epitomizes the ideal of a federal public servant working effectively with federal administrations and state governments of both parties, never looking to take credit for himself.

 

Many of the agreements, programs, and institutions the Colorado River community relies on today bear the mark of Bob Snow.  The 2007 Guidelines, the Lower Basin Multi-Species Conservation Program, the Glen Canyon Dam Long Term Experimental and Management Plan and High Flow Experiment Protocol, and various Memoranda of Understanding regarding conservation of water are just some of the many important advances that were forged with his guidance.

 

Bob’s influence in the U.S. relationship with Mexico on the Colorado River cannot be overstated.  He became close personal friends with the officials in the U.S. and Mexican section of the International Boundary and Water Commission, not only the commissioners, but also the secretaries, engineers, and other staff, earning the nickname Señor Nieve.  He was a close confidant of the late great Commissioner Roberto Salmón Castelo.  He helped to craft the seminal minutes between the countries that assisted Mexico after the devastating earthquake in the Mexicali Valley in 2010 and in which Mexico agreed to share in the reductions in water deliveries absorbed by the Lower Basin states in the U.S.  He was also instrumental in the implementation of the 2014 pulse flow, sending fresh water to the Colorado River Delta for the first time in decades.

 

But for all of these and many other outstanding professional achievements, Bob will be remembered most for his friendship and camaraderie.  To paraphrase Maya Angelou, people may forget what he said, people may forget what he did, but people will never forget how he made them feel.  Bob genuinely listened to everyone with whom he interacted and made them feel important and valued.  He forged lasting and meaningful personal relationships with so many in the Colorado River community, and those relationships will long outlast his retirement.

 

Bob is a lover of well-written books, Hatch green chiles, multiple baseball teams, excellent mole, and all kinds of rock music.  He is a fierce and devoted friend, mentor to many of us in the Basin and elsewhere, and incredibly generous with his time.  He has anecdotes from rock concerts and Mexican restaurants over the past five decades in all parts of the country that leave his listeners rolling on the floor with laughter.  From all his friends in the Colorado River Basin, we wish Bob the best and most fun retirement ever.  We hope and expect that he will continue to contribute to the overall sustainability of the Colorado River and know that he will continue to be part of our lives.

 

From your friends,

 

“For inscriptions to take place, witnesses are needed.”

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A wall of graffiti, with the framing suggesting it was taken from a moving train.

Zombies!

 

For inscriptions to take place, witnesses are needed.

Brighenti, A. M. (2010). At the wall: Graffiti writers, urban territoriality, and the public domain. _Space and Culture_, 13(3), 315-332. doi: 10.1177/1206331210365283

On the northbound morning Rail Runner out of Albuquerque’s downtown station, it’s best to sit on the  left side of the train to see the art, lit by the morning sun.

Lots of people catch the train at the Montaño station, which is more convenient and less sketchy than downtown, but you miss the best art.

Rio Grande Report, May 12, 2025

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New Mexico Rio Grande reservoir storage status diagram showing low reservoir levels up and down the river.

A great emptiness

From the agenda packet for this afternoon’s (May 12, 2025) meeting of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board.

(They do one of these every month, I always find them interesting, and I always forget to post them.)

26.5 miles are currently dry in the lower stretch of New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande, in the stretch between Socorro and Elephant Butte Reservoir, though the Low Flow Conveyance Channel (a big canal next to the river’s main channel through this lower reach – it’s an engineered system, what counts as “river” is semantics at this point) is flowing, and water is still flowing through the Elephant Butte Narrows.

The river’s actually up right now through Albuquerque thanks to last week’s rain and the warmup melting off some last bits of snow. But this is likely the peak.

Colorado River negotiators won’t be appearing at Getches-Wilkinson conference

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Alex Hager had a piece today on the decision by the Colorado River basin states principles to not appear at next month’s Getches-Wilkinson conference in Boulder. In a process where decisions are being made behind closed doors, outside of public view, Getches-Wilkinson is one of the few places those charged with the decisions show up in public, explain themselves, and answer our questions.

I said stuff:

“The unwillingness to answer the public’s questions suggests that negotiations aren’t going well,” said John Fleck, who teaches water policy at the University of New Mexico. “I think it misses an important obligation in democratic governance of a river that serves 40 million people.”

Alex did a nice job of summarizing the weird nature of this process. We tend to take it for granted, but it’s worth remembering this weirdness:

Unlike many government processes, Colorado River policymakers work in a space that does not involve a mandate for public access. Their meetings are often held behind closed doors, are not listed publicly and do not yield minutes or records that can be viewed by the public….

Reporters’ requests to state water authorities that once yielded interviews with top policymakers are now often met with written statements that tend to be short on detail.

As Joanna Allhands pointed out in Alex’s piece, this undercuts the ultimate legitimacy of the results:

Joanna Allhands, an opinion writer at the Arizona Republic who has written about the Colorado River’s “bankruptcy of leadership,” said more transparency from water policymakers “would be smart as a matter of self preservation.”

“Whatever the decision is made,” she said, “Whatever alternative gets chosen, if people feel like they’ve been left out, guess where we’re headed? We’re going to the Supreme Court.”

It rained

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Cloudy sky over a muddy river, lined by green cottonwoods with a bridge in the distance.

Mud!

A week of rain (I exaggerate, six days) has lifted our spirits after one of the driest starts to a calendar year on record in Albuquerque. The river was muddy yesterday on the family Wednesday lunch outing, and the cottonwoods looked so happy. The wild roses were blooming, we stuck our noses in them to smell.

And yet….

Graph showing continued low flow at the Albuquerque Rio Grande gage.

Lowest on this date since 1996.

  • Percentile ranking of yesterday’s flow: 7 (record goes back to 1965)
  • Lowest flow on this date in history since 1996.

 

66

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An irrigation ditch flanked by a dirt road with trees and a cloudy sky.

Ditchbanks FTW.

The cycling trick in our linear north-south Rio Grande Valley is to match the Rail Runner with the wind.

The best rides (where by “best” I mean “my favorite”) are in the valley, along the river and the ditchbanks that make up our ribbons of green.

A wind rose showing a bike ride dominated by a tailwind.

A modest tailwind, graph courtesy the excellent David at intervals.icu

A wind out of the north calls for a train ride north, and a ride back down the valley. A wind out of the south, as was forecast today, calls for a southbound train, in this case to Belen, and a ride back up the valley into town with the wind at one’s back.

The southbound train is early, so it’s mostly a warm season thing – early out the door to beat the heat – but the northbound train is a great bike riding tool year round.

This morning we caught the 6:30 southbound to Belen, arguably the southernmost peri-urban outpost of the greater Albuquerque metro area. Our route included a stretch on the east side of the river we’d never ridden because the key road, NM47, is an unnerving mix of kinda busy with no shoulder. But the ultimate goal is to ride everywhere, so for completeness sake today we gave it a go, using parallel ditchbanks whenever possible.

I switched from miles to kilometers this year for my annual ride-my-age birthday outing. The last few years I’d used an electric bike for the big rides, but this year I’m almost entirely riding a new acoustic bike (a guitar-playing friend coined this for me, though others have perhaps stumbled to the same locution?), so 66 km on the acoustic it was.

The weather was perfect. A cloud deck kept it cool, the rain mostly left us alone, and the tailwind, while not as strong as forecast, spent more time at our backs than anywhere else.

The ride was full of delights. There were:

  • a small farm field with turkeys and a very curious llama (I couldn’t get ‘em both in the same picture.)
  • lots of ditchbanks, with enough rain last night to firm up the dirt without leaving it muddy
  • egrets, lots of ‘em, cattle egrets and those other ones I can’t remember the names of
  • happy cows dining al fresco
  • a sacred place, and a plea to protect sacred places, and an ensuing conversation about atheists and Mormons and John Lennon’s Irish heritage that’s too convoluted for a blog post – but not too convoluted for a bike ride!
  • an unfortunate incident at the day’s second Lotaburger. I don’t think you could say that, technically, we got kicked out. No, we definitely did not get kicked out of Lotaburger.
  • A reminder that New Mexico State Highway 314, up from Los Lunas through Isleta Pueblo, is one of the great local bike rides – flanked by a cottonwood forest in the full green of early spring, slicing through desert wetlands, with a wide well-paved shoulder.

To top it off, the final few miles required dodging a thunderstorm, triangulating between my weather radar app and a group text among family members spread out around town. I hit my 66th kilometer just before reaching the shelter of the bus stop for the ride home, just before the first hailstones hit.

 

 

 

Quoting Luna Leopold

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The difficulty we find ourselves in is not due to the fact that the present drought is impossible to imagine. It could not be predicted, but its eventual occurrence was assured. We are caught with minimal plans to deal with an event sure to occur. Whereas for earthquakes the occurrence is not susceptible to probability analysis because the causal mechanisms are not random, for climate the hydrologic phenomena of flood and drought may be treated statistically, and good estimates of probability are available to us. The departure from the mean value is expectable, but the particular year or years in which it will occur cannot be forecast. Such is the nature of hydrologic events.

In a management philosophy and plan, it is far more necessary to minimize impact of dry years than to contend with wet ones. Though the risk of a deficient year is always present, seldom are definite plans on hand to cope with the situation when it finally arises. Rather, at the time of crisis there is a tendency toward grandiose plans to eliminate one further increment of risk, but a residual risk remains. The same crisis will occur again, less often but equally sure. Now is the time to lay plans for meeting an assured future event.

– Luna Leopold, address to the Governor’s Conference on the California Drought, Los Angeles, California, March 7, I977, later published as “A reverence for rivers.” Geology 5, no. 7 (1977): 429-430.

A modest Colorado River proposal

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A group* of my Colorado River collaborators has put together what we hope can be a useful set of foundational principles as the basin states and federal leadership search for a path toward a negotiated agreement for post-2026 Colorado River management. They’re based on a number of key premises:

  • The Colorado River Compact will remain the foundation of the river’s management, but we have to find a way past the deep disagreement between Upper and Lower basin states on what the Compact actually says.
  • Colorado River Basin tribes must be essential partners in crafting the next set of guidelines, including through compensation for foregone water use.
  • Shared pain is essential. The path toward a sustainable river system requires everyone to contribute to the solution to the problem of the river we all share.

There’s more. I encourage you to read the whole thing. (It’s short!)

* In alphabetical order: Anne Castle, John Fleck, Eric Kuhn, Jack Schmidt, Kathryn Sorensen, Katherine Tara.

Wrecking Ball Report: Western Water Assessment

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The Western Water Assessment, a federally funded research and outreach group based at the University of Colorado, sent a note to its stakeholders yesterday informing us that the new administration’s plans to eliminate large swaths of federal climate spending include WWA’s primary funding source:

We know that it can be hard to keep track of all of the news these days, and wanted to reach out to let you know that proposed changes to NOAA would eliminate the office that funds our work with you, which could mean the end of Western Water Assessment as a NOAA-funded program.

We are hard at work exploring alternative options so that we can continue to partner with and serve you. That includes our work holding community hazard planning workshops, improving rural community wildfire recovery, providing our ‘one-stop-shop’ Intermountain West Climate Dashboard and Summaries, supporting water planning efforts, and more.

In my Colorado River management world, that work includes the indispensable Colorado River Basin State of the Science report.