The southwest is getting drier. There’s less water to go around, even as more people are moving to the region. In Southern New Mexico, some experts are trying to find new sources of water, to take some strain off the reservoir and aquifer.
Phil King is a consultant with the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, which delivers water to thousands of farmers across southern New Mexico. Those farmers have a nickname for King.
“They do call me Doctor Doom,” he says.
Because each year, King’s the one who tells them how much water they can expect to receive. This year, he says, “it’s looking really bad.”
There just isn’t a lot of water. Usually, snowpack in Colorado melts and feeds the Rio Grande, which flows into the Elephant Butte Reservoir and eventually gets distributed to farmers. Last year, the snowpack hit record lows, and most of the water dried up before it ever reached Elephant Butte.
“So we had a bad year last year, but we started with good storage in the reservoir so we made it through okay,” King says. “Unfortunately, the way we got through that year was to use up all of our storage.”
Now, King says, the reservoir is down to 3% capacity.
It’s the type of situation that’s becoming more common, in the increasingly dry southwest.
“As we have grown economically in the area, our water supply has actually reduced due to climate change,” King says. “So supply and demand are headed in opposite directions, and that’s always a problem.”
There’s less water for the agriculture that defines this region, like pecan orchards and chile fields, and for new industries and population boosts in places like fast-growing Santa Teresa.
Gary Esslinger manages the Elephant Butte Irrigation District.
“People have to understand that if we’re gonna sustain what we’re doing here in the southwest and in this valley, and as we see the growth coming here, then we’re gonna have to muscle up and look at other sources of water,” he says. “We can’t rely on this river. We can’t totally rely on our groundwater. We’ve got to look at other things to bring water into the southwest.”
Esslinger says that can include seemingly radical ideas, like pumping in water from the Mississippi River, or simpler ideas, like capturing stormwater.
KC Carroll is with the Water Science and Management program at New Mexico State University. He’s part of a team that’s exploring another idea: building a desalination plant that could potentially turn brackish groundwater into fresh, drinkable water.
“The state of New Mexico has quite a significant amount of salty water or brackish water but in the past that water has not been used extensively, or much at all,” Carroll says. “So it’s essentially an untapped water resource.”
But these new water sources won’t come free.
“We are not going to run out of water,” says Phil King. “However, we are out of cheap water.”
He says pricier water may change consumers’ habits and encourage them to use less. But “access to water for basic needs is a human right,” he says. “And so you don’t want to jack up your rates so that somebody can maintain their big, lush lawn in a ritzy neighborhood where people in less wealthy neighborhoods are having trouble just paying for their indoor use.”
King says it will take multiple measures to address the water crisis. That includes basic education.
“You can regulate so much, you can price so much, but eventually you have to get to education where people just need to understand that this is the Chihuahuan Desert, it’s the Chihuahuan Desert in a time of rapid aridification, and the status quo is not an option.”
