The Quiet Water Arrives

In the night, the dogs wake us. Just outside our bedroom window there are men in the pecan orchard with flashlights. The quietly flowing irrigation water is here; water moving silently without the noisy groundwater well pumps we have gotten used to in these drought years.

This year's irrigation allocation started its journey a week and a half ago when released from the Elephant Butte Dam upstream. It has made its way down the state through the dry bed of the Rio Grande, branching off into canals and ditches to the gates that let it into fields and orchards.

The water comes to the farmers when the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (known around here as EBID--the initials; or spoken as a word--Ebid) schedules it, thus the voices at three in the morning. They are checking to see that the water has gotten to the farthest reaches of this orchard before moving to the next.

The soft Spanish voices call out to each other that the orchard is full. They carefully step across the slick flooded clay and drive off quietly in their pickup truck to close one orchard's gate and open another.

 The thirsty spadefoot toads begin their joyous songs.

 

At dawn, the toads are quiet; if you turn up your volume you can mostly hear doves and roosters waking with the day.

Water is a Really Big Deal Here

This is the way the Rio Grande has looked all winter: Dry and empty. People walk their dogs and fly kites in the riverbed. That sign warns people not to swim because of the strong current. No problemo.

The Rio is a managed river, no longer allowed to run free. Snowmelt and runoff is stored upstream from here in reservoirs; water treaties between Mexico, Texas, and New Mexico determine who gets how much when the water is released. Our governing body here in southern New Mexico is the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID), which allots water to farmers and determines when the water will be sent down the river bed to them. This year southern New Mexican farms will get only 8 acre inches, up from 3 acre inches last year, but way below the usual 3 acre feet in good years.

Looking upstream

We went to see the newly flowing water, all silty and sludgy, as it made its way down the other day. This is a water event comparable to something like ice-out on Lake Winnipesaukee back in New Hampshire.

Big problem, though: None of this water is meant for the farmers here or in Texas, right now. EBID had originally scheduled the release for everyone's water all at one time in mid-May, but there was some kind of communications problem and the farmers in Mexico still expected to receive their water at the usual time, right about now.

There's a lot of foamy brown stuff as the water first sweeps through the dry river bed

Because the Mexican farmers weren't given enough notice to make other plans to pump from groundwater until the May release, they demanded (within their rights by treaty) to have their water sent now. The water in these photos will pass through New Mexico and Texas on its way to Mexico and there will be plenty lost to evaporation and through sinking into the dry riverbed. 

The view downstream

By the time they start getting their water in mid-May, the farmers here in New Mexico will have lost yet another precious acre inch of this year's scarce water allotment because of this earlier release to Mexico, and will have to pump that much more from their wells, pulling water from the underground reserves in the aquifer. Pumping is expensive, the aquifer is shrinking, and deeper pumping costs even more.

Pumping a new well in the orchard

Local farmers are having to drill new, deeper wells to get to the water they need for irrigation. Here is the drilling rig out behind our place in the pecan orchard; it's been working for days, drilling deeper and deeper for precious water.

For more information on this subject:

Release to Mexico in the Rio Grande Project, April 3, 2012

Official Website of the Elephant Butte Irrigation District

Water Supply Outlook, March 2012

New Mexico Ground Water Fact Sheet