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Remodel your bathroom to save water

Posted:May 15, 2006

Thinking of remodeling your bathroom? Check out this article on bathroom design. It includes tips on conserving water including dual-flush toilets, low-flow showers, sink facuet aerators, and more. The article also explains the economic impact of saving water in the bathroom.

Post your publications on NMWATERCONNECTIONS.ORG!

Posted:October 30, 2003

You can now post publications on NM Water Connections website. Go to http://www.nmwaterconnections.org/editPub.php and upload your publications or simply enter a link to publications already available on the internet.

Letter to State Engineer John D'Antonio

Posted:February 10, 2003

The following text was sent to State Engineer John D'Antonio on Feb 4th, 2003 by Rick Warnock, President of the Sacrmento Mountains Watershed Restoration Corp. Its intent is to stimulate a discussion on the revision of New Mexico's water laws. Any responses and recommendations are gratefully welcome and can be directed to SMWRC.ORG or SMWRC, PO Box 340, La Luz, NM 88337-0340

Dear Mr. D’Antonio,

The following information provides the basis for a discussion on improving the management of New Mexico’s waters:

Background:

Since it’s inception, the State of New Mexico has relied upon the principles of prior appropriation and beneficial use as a means of rationing water amongst its citizens. These principles may have served the State well in the early nineteen hundreds. With a growing population and immense strides in technology, the traditional water appropriation system no longer serves the needs of New Mexicans.

Prior Appropriation:

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries prior appropriation simplified disputes between surface water users. Over the years the discovery of groundwater and new technology greatly changed water usage. Because the interrelationship of surface and ground water was little understood, watersheds became over appropriated. The system has become entangled in a near impossible web of litigation. Put more bluntly, the system is broken.
The obsession with appropriation of “quantity-certain amounts” (acre footage) centers on demand and ignores the issue of supply. Without a sound knowledge of supply, quantity-certain appropriations cannot be guaranteed.

Beneficial Use:

The State has always used an extremely broad definition of “beneficial use”. In 1985 the legislature instructed the State Engineer to consider “conservation of waters within the State” and “public welfare” in the granting of water permits. The State Engineer’s Office has shied from tackling the definition of “public welfare” and the concept of “conservation.“ Despite evidence that public welfare has been impaired and despite evidence that wasteful and non-conservative water use exists, the State Engineer has never challenged or re-opened a permit for modification. The tradition is one of “once approved, always approved.”

Solutions:

Water Budgets:

In over-appropriated areas water budgets can be established based upon the area’s water recharge (supply). Areas should be defined primarily as watersheds and then sub-divided to localized areas. This will prevent the transfer of waters from one watershed/aquifer to another, thus insuring watershed deterioration will not occur. All quantity-certain appropriations can then be converted to a percentage of the entire budget. Budgets should be modified each year by supply (recharge) quantities determined under the best science available. Lengthy and costly adjudications can be avoided by negotiation or legislation. Hopefully, the concept of percentile appropriations can be extended to New Mexico’s compacts with other States.

Water Banking:

Water banking can be developed once water budgets are established. This will allow for the transfer of water within the budget area, either as an outright transfer or as an annual exchange of water. Placing value on the water can resolve the unfairness of using water for non-economic purposes and still protect those owners of water rights from losing value of an intangible asset unfairly. Water subsidizing will be eliminated. As water value increases wasteful consumption diminishes.

Expanded and empowered State Engineer’s Office:

Current laws and regulation controlling the hearing activities of the State Engineer are overly cumbersome and too legalistic. Without expensive legal representation , anyone protesting the issuance of a water permit is at a great disadvantage. This system favors large rich entities against smaller users. Disclosure rules are lacking since only publication in a newspaper within the county is required, thus promoting a secretive process in which even contiguous landowners are uninformed. Homeowners and farmers can be easily damaged without any recourse but to seek retribution after the fact through expensive litigation in the District Courts. A complete review of the process needs to be undertaken to ensure openness and fairness.

The State Engineer’s office should be given clear and effective powers to police water abusers and well drillers. A water court available to all citizens, without costly legal representation, should implement these policing activities.

Watershed Management:

New Mexico’s goal should be sustainable water resource management. A coordinated task force of all affected agencies should be established to create, monitor and enhance watershed management programs to achieve the goal. Programs such as flood control, forest restoration, and watershed restoration should be performed cooperatively across agencies. Using sound science to expand the water supply will allow for larger water budgets.

This proposal has been simplified as much as possible. The issues are complex but need to be tackled from the ground up. “Band-aid legislation” will only delay a resolution to New Mexico’s water problems. The SMWRC and I stand ready to provide further assistance in helping New Mexico move toward cutting edge watershed management.

Sincerely,
Rick Warnock
President

Water Report Released

Posted:July 26, 2002

New Mexico has no plan to meet our ever-increasing demands for water with our finite water supplies. Instead, we are passively but inexorably letting the future of our water affairs be determined by the day-to-day operation of outdated laws, policies, regulations and institutions.

Concerned that there wasn’t was a sufficient sense of urgency or clarity about what changes need to occur, Alletta Belin, Consuelo Bokum, and Dr. Frank Titus decided that someone needed to at least provide one roadmap for what changes are needed now, not later. The result is a water report entitled "Taking Charge of Our Water Destiny: A Water Management Policy Guide for New Mexico in the 21st Century" which was released this June.

Frank Titus begins the report with an alarming but realist sketch of where New Mexico is heading if new water management is not adopted. If we fail to take action, either our failure to make deliveries under interstate stream compacts or to provide sufficient water for senior water rights holders or endangered species may mean that the courts will take control and manage our water supply with one issue driving its decision-making to the detriment of other needs. Or New Mexicans could find in the next ten years that our traditional farming communities will have dried up, our rivers will have become either dry arroyos or concrete ditches devoid of bosques, riparian or aquatic life, and in many parts of the state dependent upon groundwater mining there will be a last-ditch, desperate, and expensive search for more water.

The report focuses on several actions that the authors believe are key to improving our ability to manage water. One key problem is that New Mexico has no water plan. It lacks needed information about its water supply and demand, and it has no plan to ensure that we can meet water demand with supply. A state water plan is the central element around which New Mexico should be creating and organizing water resources protection and management and is essential for planning for the future. The plan should provide for water budgeting; provide mechanisms to ensure interstate compact delivery compliance; make provisions for drought management (including alternatives to priority calls); and tie into our current prior appropriation system, including its emphasis on public welfare and water conservation. The public, elected officials, and administrators have a big gap to close: we need information, and we need to agree on priorities and on essential steps that must be taken if we expect a water future that we are happy with. If we care about the future and the social and environmental impacts of our water use, we need to be more protective our of water resources and the best tool for doing that is to plan.

New Mexico also needs to be more protective of its groundwater resources which are being mined -- that is using more than is being replenished. New Mexico has taken some measures to conserve water, but those measures have been predominately in urban areas. Other questions facing the state include the fate of its rural communities: Should rural communities should be sacrificed to meet the growing demands of urban areas? In addition, the priority system on which the state’s water management is based has developed some flaws. These need to be examined and changes need to be made before the flaws cause the water management system to flounder.

The tTurner Foundation funded the research and writing of the report. The Thaw Charitable Trust, Wm. C. Kenney Watershed Protection Foundation and the McCune Charitable Trust funded the printing and distribution. Copies of the report are available from 1000 Friends of New Mexico at either 1001 Marquette, NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102, (505) 848-8232 or 302 Aztec, Suite B, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87501, (505) 986-3831. There is a $5.00 charge for postage and handling.

drought

Posted:May 31, 2001

New York Times
Science Section, May 29, 2001

Clues to Mayans' Demise

By HENRY FOUNTAIN
What caused the collapse of Maya civilization in Central America in the
eighth and ninth centuries has been the subject of much study and
speculation. Among possible factors, drought has been thought by many
experts to have played a role.

Researchers at the University of Florida, expanding upon a study they
conducted six years ago that suggested that the Mayans were indeed victims
of a prolonged drought, have now shown that the region suffered from
recurring droughts, apparently tied to a two-century cycle of solar
activity.

The researchers, whose latest study was published in the journal Science,
examined sediment cores from Lake Chichancanab in the Yucatan. The lake
water contains dissolved calcium sulfate, better known as gypsum, and when
conditions are dry and the lake volume drops, more of the gypsum
precipitates out of the water and falls to the lake bottom.

By measuring gypsum levels in sediment core layers and dating the layers,
the researchers showed that drought conditions occurred in a 208-year cycle
over the 2,600 years represented in the cores. This is remarkably close to a
206-year cycle of solar intensity (as measured by the carbon 14, produced by
cosmic ray bombardment, in tree rings).

The researchers found that the two cycles were in sync: peak drought matched
peak solar activity. While the actual increase in solar intensity in the
206-year cycle was very small, the researchers suggested it was enough to
induce climate changes that would have affected the Mayans. In fact, they
show that other known periods of Maya decline (before the final collapse)
correspond to drought periods revealed in the cores.

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