Water Matters!

In this week’s Water Matters, John Fleck switches from the host’s chair to the guest’s chair (it’s really the same chair) as co-host Rin Tara sits down with him to talk about the new book he and Bob Berrens wrote, Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of Modern Albuquerque. From Voltaire’s Candide to the myth of a lost Garden of Eden on the Rio Grande Valley floor, Rin and John talk about how the effort to manage a river shaped the modern garden Albuquerque has become, and what lessons the process might have for the challenges our community faces in a climate changed world.

Lots of news on this week’s Water Matters.

• Kelsey Fendler rows the Pacific (paywalled)
• Mark Olalde, Alex Hager, and Sharon Chischilly on the Northeastern Arizona water settlement
• Algal blooms at Clayton Lake, but also dinosaur tracks!   
• Santa Clara raises its water rates
• High tech fire detection in Albuquerque’s bosque
• Roswell water quality report
• Heather  Sackett on Colorado West Slope lawmakers breaking from their state’s tough stance on Colorado River negotiations
• New Mexico gets a new Colorado River negotiator
• Inciweb for the latest fire updates

Hunting for signs of hope in a hot, dry June

With a high pressure system parked over the Four Corners, Albuquerque has been hot and dry, and in this week’s episode Rin Tara and John Fleck don’t shy away from the bad water news weighing on New Mexico:

• Total flow on the Rio Grande at Otowi so far this year is the lowest it has been since 1904
•  81 miles of the Rio Grande’s main channel between Otowi and San Marcial is dry
• The federal government has stopped paying to monitor the Rio Grande for Los Alamos National Laboratory contamination at Santa Fe’s Buckman diversion

But they also see hopeful signs:

• Forecasters say odds favor a wet summer monsoon season, the July-September period that brings afternoon thunderstorms to Albuquerque
• While the Rio Grande’s main channel is dry through large stretches of Albuquerque, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy district was able to capture some of the flow from recent rains to deliver water to irrigators in and around Albuquerque
• Delivering water to Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District outfalls to keep a bit of water flowing in the Rio Grande’s main channel

Other links and news of note:

•  Restoring the headwaters
• Albuquerque’s drinking water quality report
• Surface water quality standards

Guest: Aidan Manning 

This week Rin Tara and John Fleck are joined by Aidan Manning from New Mexico Wild’s Rivers and Waters Program to talk about El Niño and what it means for New Mexico’s weather and climate.

Dr. Manning explains how a shift in temperatures in the equatorial Pacific can have big impacts on the patterns of wet and dry weather, tipping the odds 

Since Rin, John, and Aidan recorded this conversation, the forecasts have been updated. Odds of a moderate or stronger El Nino are up to a staggering 98% for the winter, with a 63% chance of a very strong event. But Dr. Manning points out the risk of misinterpreting what that means. El Niño tips the odds toward a wet winter across the southwest, but a stronger El Niño doesn’t necessarily translate to a wetter winter. And for the larger river basin communities New Mexico is a part of, El Niño generally doesn’t translate into odds of a wetter winter in the Upper Colorado River Basin, which is crucial for the West’s water supplies.

To follow the development of El Niño:

·      NOAA’s El Niño/La Niña background

·      NOAA’s official ENSO tracking

·      Relative Oceanic Niño Index

·      Mulitivariate ENSO Index

A Drying Rio Grande

This week Rin Tara and John Fleck provide an update on the increasingly dry conditions on New Mexico’s central river system, where flows on the Rio Grande at Albuquerque dropped to zero June 3 and are likely to stay that way until the valley receives monsoon rains. By one measure, flow into the Middle Rio Grande Valley is the lowest ever recorded, with streamflow records going back to 1895.

But if you want to see water, they provide hope in an odd place – Albuquerque’s wastewater treatment plant outfall, a reminder that “wastewater” is not actually being wasted when we return it to the river.

Also:

·      Pollinator kits

·      Texas v. New Mexico lawsuit settlement

·      Pollinator Day at the Albuquerque Open Space Visitors Center

John’s book Ribbons of Green 

Guest: Anne Marken

Anne Marken gets up every morning and looks at snowpack data and river flow numbers. As the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s River Operations and Telemetry Manager, it’s Marken’s job to marshal the Rio Grande’s precious water through New Mexico’s Middle Valley, juggling a dizzying array of competing needs, interests and values.

In this week’s Water Matters, Anne talks with Rin Tara and John Fleck about what that means in this most difficult of water years, with declining river flows, little upstream reservoir storage to make up for the snowpack’s shortcomings, and one of the warmest springs on record.

If you’re interested in the latest on river flows, you can do no better than Anne’s monthly report to the Conservancy District Board. In this episode of Water Matters, Anne talks about how she thinks about managing water in a difficult year like this.

If you’re interested in more information:

·       Irrigators information meetings May 28 – June 24

·       MRGCD’s real time river and irrigation system flow data

And, to quote Marken’s monthly request, with which she ends her report to her board, “Pray for rain.”

For the May 20 Water Update, Rin and John step away from discussing the bleak water numbers and take some time to talk about the moral obligation of hope, municipal water system resilience, flows for the Rio Grande silvery minnow, and some remarks from the recent NM Water Dialogue.

For further reading:

http://mariafarrell.com/

https://www.abcwua.org/wp-content/uploads/Your_Drinking_Water-PDFs/Water_2120_Volume_I.pdf

https://www.phoenix.gov/content/dam/phoenix/waterservicessite/documents/2021_drought_management_plan_final.pdf

In this week’s Water Matters, Rin Tara and John Fleck talk about the delightfully named “jiggle,” a series of pulses released from Isleta Diversion Dam downstream from Albuquerque. It’s a technique valuable in dry years to encourage the spawning of the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow. And this is a very dry year – the lowest flow ever recorded for late April, for example (when Rin and John recorded this), at the US Geological Survey’s historic Embudo Gage.

Links:

·       A Silver Lining: Interpreting the Endangered Species Act to Envision Management of the Rio Grande Silvery Minnow in a Broader Cultural, Ecological, and Political Context, Rin’s paper on the silvery minnow in the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy

·       Ribbons of Green, John’s new book with Bob Berrens about the history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande.

There is no way to sugar coat the bad water news pill as 2026 enters what should be the rising limb of the runoff season, as Rin Tara and John Fleck report in this week's water update.

Consider: 

• Flow at Embudo, on the Rio Grande upstream from Española, is at its second lowest level for this point in the year in a record that, with a few gaps in the record in the early 20th century, goes back to the late 1800s. 
• Flow at the the USGS Albuquerque gage is the lowest it has been at this point in the year in half a century. 
• With the snowpack in the Rio Grande headwaters nearly melted out, the Rio Grande flowing out of the mountains at Del Norte in Colorado may already have peaked. It doesn't usually peak until June. 
• Flow on the Gila in Southern New Mexico is the lowest it has been at this point in the year since record keeping began in 1928.

And yet... Rin went hiking over the weekend in the Gila and saw Painted Redstarts and a whole lot more, and John rode his bike down to Albuquerque bosque (a map to Albuquerque's delightful "Glass Garden here), where the cottonwoods are greening up. Both rivers - the Gila and the Rio Grande - were low but still lovely.

Guest: Tucker Davidson

It seemed unfair – asking Tucker Davidson to name his favorite bird. A senior water associate at Audubon Southwest, Davidson is a hopeless bird nerd – pulling out his binoculars as he drives Rio Grande levee roads and walks through Albuquerque’s bosque.

Davidson joins Rin Tara and John Fleck to talk about the birds he loves, the places he loves, and how you can turn to birds to bring hope as drought and climate change dry New Mexico’s rivers.

And you, too, can visit some of his favorite places in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley:

-        The Rio Grande Nature Center

-        Albuquerque’s Open Space Visitor’s Center (especially the pond out by the parking lot, which Tucker and his Audubon colleagues help supply with water)

-        The ponds in the bosque near Tingley Beach

-        For the dirt-road adventurous, the “River Mile 60” area near Fort Craig

-        Any farm road around the valley, especially after irrigation. The birds love it.

Tucker’s birding bottom line: look for places where the water slows down.