Month: November 2016

The Senator went on to discuss five objectives he felt most people would believe were reasonable to pursue concerning laws and policies governing our water: 1) ensure an adequate supply of water for current and future needs; 2) ensure that our uses of water are sustainable; 3) protect valid existing water rights; 4) ensure our uses of water are consistent with protecting the environment; and 5) facilitate the use of water for highest value purposes.

Given those water policy objectives, the Senator said, “…I would conclude that we have built a set of laws, policies, and administrative practices over many decades—many of which are not that well designed to help us achieve our objectives. We need more flexibility in the systems we use to manage water.” The Senator proceeded to discuss models that can be used to administer water that “sidestep much of the legal and institutional apparatus that now exists.” The models include shortage sharing agreements, the Strategic Water Reserve, conservation plans, Active Water Resource Management (AWRM), collaborative efforts to forego the use of water in order to maintain streamflows, and the voluntary use of native water for environmental purposes. Click here to view the Senator’s talk in its entirety.

The Albert E. Utton Memorial Water Lecture was established in 1999 to celebrate the memory of Al Utton (1931-1998), who for over 35 years served the citizens of New Mexico as a distinguished member of the University of New Mexico School of Law, a twenty-year member of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, a valued advisor to the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute, a worldwide authority on trans­boundary resources issues, and a lifelong friend of the New Mexico Water Community. The Utton Water Lecture Committee selects speakers and Senator Jeff Bingaman joins other eminent recipients including Dan Tarlock (2001), Mexican Ambassador Alberto Szekely (2003), Charles DuMars (2005), Em Hall (2006), John Hernandez (2008), Joe Stell (2009), Tanya Trujillo (2013), and John Hawley (2014). Contributions to the Utton Lecture Fund can be made by clicking here.

Maxwell began with a pilot study on the Rincon Arroyo watershed that has historically flooded the town of Rincon, just downstream of Hatch in Doña Ana County. In a collaboration with the South Central New Mexico Stormwater Coalition, Maxwell is attempting to quantify the flood control, aquifer recharge, agricultural, and ecological benefits of land practices and flood control interventions that slow water down and spread it to increase infiltration. This pilot study involves assessing remotely sensed data, creating a hydrologic flow model, and modeling the water budget at both this finer-scale as well as on the larger Hatch/Mesilla basin-scale. She is adapting a system dynamics model originally created by an interdisciplinary team to assess the resiliency of traditional irrigation communities in northern New Mexico (Fernald et al., 2012).

With the results from this pilot study and from other concurrent NM WRRI ground-truthing and modeling studies, Maxwell will then analyze the effects of scenarios of similar strategies extended throughout the larger Hatch/Mesilla basin area. The findings and method for applying these scenarios to different locations will then feed into and assist in projecting scenarios in NM WRRI’s New Mexico Dynamic Statewide Water Budget (DSWB) model. Future surveys by land managers will also provide desired and feasible land management practices for scenarios that can increase water storage. Anticipated results include identifying areas that may provide the greatest potential water storage benefits from optimized management. The study’s overall goal is to assess the potential for a system of increased agricultural recharge to align social investment with sustainable management goals.

Citations:
Fernald, A., V. Tidwell, J. Rivera, S. Rodríguez, S. Guldan, C. Steele, C. Ochoa, B.  Hurd, M. Ortiz, and K. Boykin. 2012. Modeling sustainability of water, environment, livelihood, and culture in traditional irrigation communities and their linked watersheds. Sustainability, 4(11), 2998-3022.

South Central New Mexico Stormwater Coalition. Website accessed 2016. http://www.ebid-nm.org/StormwaterCoalition/

For this project, James Fluke will quantify processes controlling bacterial exceedances in the Rio Grande near Albuquerque by monitoring and modeling the growth potential and decay rates for E. coli bacteria in the Rio Grande main channel and streambed sediments. These parameters will be used to estimate the bacterial load contribution from resuspension of streambed sediments during different flow conditions. The results of this research will benefit discharging entities’ contamination reduction strategies and water users’ health by providing a better understanding of the sources and sinks of E. coli along the reach throughout the year.

The NM WRRI student grant started on October 1, 2016 and James presented a poster on his research at the 61^st Annual New Mexico Water Conference in Silver City on October 7. James is from Bernalillo, New Mexico and received a BS degree in civil engineering (concentration in hydraulics and hydrology) from the UNM in 2016. He plans to complete a master’s degree in May 2018 and in the future wants to study emergent water and health issues in developing nations.