By Katey Byrd
At a meeting of the New Mexico State Water and Natural Resources Legislative Interim Committee in late August 2007 in Taos, state water engineer John D’Antonio noted, “The Southwest United States is expected to be one of the five areas in the world that, over the next couple of decades, is going to receive less precipitation overall.”
As the state grapples with rules and regulations aimed at more thoroughly managing water resources for an uncertain future, local acequia communities worry that state interaction with communal acequia systems could adversely affect centuries of local water-sharing practices that define and characterize acequia use.
Acequias are the birthplaces from which grew over a thousand communities in New Mexico and southern Colorado. Often cited as the first governmental entities of their communities, these communal irrigation canals were the foundation of agriculture and of the region’s civilization, established by a self-governing system based on the principles of equity and rotation.
In both New Mexico and Colorado, Prior Appropriation law allows the first historic users of water to have first use of the water. In many cases, acequias are the most senior water rights in their basin. Individual acequias within a watershed also operate on a priority system, although that system is sometimes less stringent as parciantes, or water-rights holders within an acequia, adapt within their communities by sharing water in times of shortage.
In their four-hundred-plus years in New Mexico, acequias have relied on a system of reparto or repartimiento—historic water-sharing principles that call for the dispersing of water to the utmost benefit of the community. During drought, this credo is highlighted. A knowledge of the acequia and its parciantes is essential to administering the sharing of water during a shortage.
The amount of water available for irrigation is highly variable. Many of northern New Mexico’s and southern Colorado’s acequias are solely dependent on the snow pack that runs off as surface water from the mountains for all of the water that will be available to them for the irrigation season.
“Water is scarce,” said Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association. “In a typical year, an acequia may not get its full amount of water. In fact, we only get some fraction of what our land could probably accommodate. We live in a very water-short part of the world.”
D.L. Sanders, attorney for New Mexico water engineer D’Antonio, said state oversight of acequias would help manage surface-level problems, potentially helping to meet the requirements of downstream compact requirements.
Sanders pointed to Colorado as a blueprint for New Mexico state oversight.
“In Colorado, water commissioners have keys to all acequia headgates,” Sanders said. “When they say there’s a compact issue, they go out, look at their supply, and they say, ‘You are off today, ditch.’ They unlock the headgate, ratchet it down, and shut it off.”
“It’s pretty cut-and-dry here,” affirms Joe Gallegos, a fifth-generation acequia farmer from San Luis, Colorado. Gallegos irrigates from the Culebra Watershed off the San Luis People’s Ditch, the oldest adjudicated water right in Colorado, which his great-great grandfather Dario Gallegos helped found in 1852.
“In Colorado, the water commissioner goes and takes out of the river the amount of water allocated to each acequia,” said Gallegos. “He opens the headgate. He lets you know if you’re taking too much, or taking too little. Everyone has a meter to tell them how much water they’re getting. If somebody’s taking water off a lower priority, the water commissioner will just shut it down. It’s pretty cutthroat. And in drought years, when one ditch has priority over another, the lower priority ditches do not receive any water.”
Gallegos said climate variability has always been integrated into acequia management.
“Acequias are well designed to deal with drought,” said Gallegos. “We live in a high- altitude desert, so we deal with drought almost every year. We have wet cycles and dry cycles. Drought has always been an issue with acequias.”
“As far as what global warming is going to do to us—I don’t know how we’re going to handle that,” said Gallegos.
As first steps in aggressively administering the state’s water resources in response to increased demand and drought conditions, the New Mexico state engineer’s office introduced Active Water Resource Management (AWRM) guidelines in 2004. The rules set out to thoroughly monitor and track all of the state’s waters through a heightened set of rules, regulations, metering, and the appointment of water masters with authority over each region.
The regulations include provisions to expedite water transfers and to create water “replacement plans” in light of a sluggish adjudication process. According to the state engineer, these tools will offer holders of junior water rights, who are limited by their low priority, the chance to quickly buy water from willing holders of senior water rights.
Attorney Fred Waltz, who has represented hundreds of acequias, commented during the legislative hearing, “Active Water Resource Management in my opinion is very problematic, and I honestly think it’s unworkable in most areas of the state.”
“In fact,” Waltz said, “I like to call it Active Water Resource Meddling.”
Waltz explained that long-standing water allocation practices and established customs currently preside successfully over the more than 1,000 acequias in New Mexico.
“In New Mexico, water has been allocated for hundreds of years. People have figured out a way to do it,” said Waltz. “One size does not fit all. Water is allocated differently in different areas. This involves not only acequias, but also water use by pueblos, Indian tribes, and other communities. The best way to allocate water is to figure out what those local relationships are.”
AWRM was challenged in 2005 by several entities under the premise that the rules are unconstitutional because they grant their enforcement to the state engineer, undermining the court’s ability to make judgments on water rights and adjudications.
Acequias are concerned that specific language was removed from AWRM stipulations that would protect acequias from expedited water transfers and sales. They believe these rules may undermine the historic democracy of community ditches, where water has traditionally belonged not to an individual water-right holder, but to the ditch association, and where one parciante may cast one vote, regardless of their acreage or the entitlement of their water right.
Acequias, which typically have very low operating budgets, are also concerned about the potential cost of implementing metering. Heightened metering could lead to strict priority enforcement, potentially undermining the Common Good principle of acequia waters. In addition, under AWRM, alternative water-sharing agreements pursuant to parciantes’ wishes may be subject to approval at the discretion of the state engineer.
“You’re talking about a choking off of the acequia,” said Paula Garcia on behalf of the Acequia Association. “It is a piecemeal dismantling of this system, which requires collective and cooperative labor.”
State engineer D’Antonio disagreed. “With the senior status of acequias, there’s probably never going to be a point where we’re curtailing acequia water to fulfill downstream compact deliveries,” he said. “We don’t want to get involved in the day-to-day operations of all the acequias. They have their own mechanism in place, and they’re managing their water.”
Still, acequia communities worry that maintaining continuity within the state’s water resources could be destabilized as AWRM regulations propagate the temporary or permanent sale of senior water rights—typically acequia, Native American, and agricultural water rights—to lower priority users—typically recreational, industrial, commercial, and municipal users.
“We do nothing to discourage growth within the community,” said Water and Natural Resources Committee member Carlos Cisneros. “The downside is that people are coming in with different backgrounds, different cultures, and a different history. They’re not buying into the notion of traditional values and history as it relates to the agricultural development of the community.”
“The problem I’m seeing is that cities and industries are taking a lot of agricultural water,” said Gallegos, who referred to a recent and unsuccessful attempt by a local mining operation to obtain acequia water rights near San Luis. “The impact to agriculture is tremendous. We should not transport water out—it just proves to me that these cities don’t have the infrastructure to handle that type of growth.”
“And we’re fearing something,” said Gallegos’ brother Jerry, a parciante in Colorado’s Costilla and Conejos counties. “Taos—it’s only sixty miles away. As property values are skyrocketing, we fear people will move here to get cheaper land.”
Gallegos believes that along with heightened population growth will come the need to document water use more precisely.
“They’re metering all these wells in Colorado,” said Gallegos. “They’re going to only allow what is adjudicated to that well. If they go over their adjudication, there will be fines, and everything else.”
Gallegos said he believes this implementation may also lead to increased oversight of acequias.
“It’s kind of sad that it would have to come to that,” said Gallegos. “I imagine they have some kind of plan in Denver to deal with shortages and growth, something that they haven’t really begun to share with anyone. When you start sharing that, you might scare people.”
In Mora, New Mexico, a village about fifty miles south of Taos, acequia parciante Ivan Roper spoke of his community’s historic response to allocating water during shortages.
“When there isn’t enough water to go around, two mayordomos will get together and say, ‘There is a water shortage. Do you have people who want to irrigate today?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Okay.’” And they will put all the water into one ditch to irrigate. Then, if another parciante on the other ditch wants water, they will swap the water to the other acequia. We had to do that last year.”
“I don’t feel the state agencies are very comfortable with what we’re doing,” said Roper. “It’s what we’ve been doing all along, though.”
“Right now there is no state oversight,” Roper said. “As far as the state actually imposing anything on us—they haven’t.”
Despite acequia oversight by a local Water Commissioner in Colorado, Gallegos said the San Luis People’s Ditch has traditionally faced fines in order to implement water-sharing practices in times of drought for the benefit of all.
“If a guy has five acres and his whole place depends on those five acres, a guy with bigger acreage will give him some water,” said Gallegos. “It’s on a small scale, but the community works together to help each other out.”
The acequia has also assisted lower-priority acequias in times of drought. Gallegos said parciantes in Colorado could be penalized for this under current state law.
“A lot of the issues here require totally adapting,” said Gallegos. “We always have to adapt. For 150 years plus, we’ve been learning how we can meld traditional community water law into Prior Appropriation water law.”
Gallegos said integrating elements of historic water-sharing practices into state law would help Colorado’s acequias better utilize water in times of drought.
“They have passed bills in New Mexico, so it’s not a radical idea to get special legislation for our type of system,” said Gallegos. “Acequias are a working mechanism for agriculture, especially small-scale agriculture. Colorado needs water legislation specifically for acequias.”
In 2007, the New Mexico legislature passed a memorial bill recognizing acequias as having cultural legacy in the state. In addition to signing a bill on the significance of native agricultural practices, the legislature gave millions of dollars for acequia governance education, reservoir and dam projects, and capital outlay funding for acequias. Over 150 acequias in New Mexico also adopted bylaws to self-regulate water transfers after the state legislature approved the bill in 2003. The transfer of conserved acequia waters to other users within the acequia was approved this year.
“Between 30 and 50% of water rights on agricultural lands could be dried up if current population projections continue,” said Garcia. “It’s not clear where that threshold will be within an individual acequia—how many water rights you can transfer out before it reaches the threshold of not functioning anymore. The acequias are strong advocates of prioritizing water for agricultural and historical uses.”
“It’s proven history that any time you transfer this water to municipalities, cultures collapse,” said Gallegos. “But we will never blow away, because our culture has always kept us here. We won’t get richer—but we’ll never starve to death.”
Under acequia management, water has been successfully distributed for generations. A takeover by the state could sound the death knell for a remarkably efficient community system.
San Luis, Colorado
Mora, New Mexico
Ortiz y San Miguel
on the farm of Joe Gallegos
Acequia Tour with Ivan Roper
Water Tour with Jerry Gallegos
