History of Water in NM

A History of Water in New Mexico
By Peggy Rudberg

“There is not enough water to irrigate all the lands.” So said John Wesley Powell in 1893 after four extensive scientific surveys of the West. His warning was dismissed but has proved to be prophetic. Climate research and modeling indicate that Santa Fe and much of New Mexico can expect water shortages of 25 percent within the next 50 years. Anticipated temperature increases of 5 to 7 degrees will intensify the drought.

Water has always played a crucial role in Earth’s narrative. Around 95 percent of early Earth’s surface was covered by a shallow ocean. The amount of water on Earth has not changed. Its form is what varies, continually circulating from liquid to gas to solid. Today, liquid water covers 71 percent of Earth’s surface, but over 96 percent of that is salt water found in the global oceans, unfit for drinking or most agriculture.

About 100 million years ago, New Mexico was mostly featureless lowlands covered by a shallow sea, the “Western Interior Seaway.” About 65 million years ago, Earth’s crust in what is now Northern New Mexico was forced into north-south folds by a collision of tectonic plates. These folds produced the foundation of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southernmost spur of the Rocky Mountains. Disruption continued: volcanoes built up land, and wind and water wore it down. After millennia of sculpting and erosion by melting glaciers, the Sangre de Cristos reached their current configuration of summits and cirques about 15,000 years ago. Mountains influence the weather around them by forcing air upward into cooler zones where it condenses to form clouds leading to precipitation. Many regions depend on this water cycle for their fresh water supply.
While the Sangre de Cristos were forming, another important geologic and hydrological event was occurring in Northern New Mexico, the Rio Grande Rift. Although clashing plates lead to uplift, stretching plates lead to thinning crust, shifting earth downward. The resulting north-south basins and low valleys filled with glacial meltwater and rain, coalescing to become the Rio Grande River.
Ever since humans gained cognition thousands of years ago, climate conditions figured largely in their habitation and adaptations. At least 13,000 years ago, Paleo-Indians near Clovis, New Mexico, left spearheads, remains of campfires, and the first known human-dug well in North America. Early hunter-gatherers moved with herds and seasons and found water sources where they could. But when agrarian culture supplanted the mobile lifestyle, proximity to water sources grew in importance.

There are signs of water management in ancestral Puebloan cultures beginning well over 12,000 years ago. It is surmised that cliff dwellers hand carried water in jugs to their shelters and employed flood-water farming, locating scattered plots where seasonal flooding would soak but not wash out planted areas.

In Chaco Canyon, fields were placed in the path of runoffs and reservoirs lined with stone slabs fed systems of ditches leading to cultivated land. The more sedentary tribes in New Mexico lived and farmed along the Rio Grande, Pecos and San Juan Rivers.

When Spanish migrants arrived in New Mexico in 1598 they already had dry land farming experience using irrigation techniques created by Muslims from North Africa and earlier Roman colonizers. The immigrants found that Indigenous Americans had developed similar means of collecting and transporting surface water, using canals, terraces and dams.

By 1850, Santa Fe County had a population of 7,713 and was experiencing a water shortage. The city of Santa Fe sourced its drinking water from the Santa Fe River, fed from snowmelt and runoff from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Beginning in 1881, a series of dams were constructed in the river basin. Today two storage reservoirs, McClure and Nichols, provide about 40 percent of Santa Fe’s drinking water.

Sangre de Cristo Mountains during a winter sunset (January 29, 2013)

Photo courtesy Vivaverdi, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The most recent drought that started at the turn of the 21st century holds the record for driest period of 22-plus years in at least 12,000 years and coupled with population growth, the city of Santa Fe has needed to access allocations from the 1922 Colorado River Compact. The 1922 compact was meant to apportion water rights equitably to the seven states that encompass the drainage basin and tributaries of the Colorado River. The San Juan River, a major tributary of the Colorado River, runs through northwestern New Mexico and gives the state water rights to the Colorado River. Through a complex system of dams, pipes and tunnels, some under the Continental Divide, Colorado River water is diverted into the Rio Grande Basin and eventually into the city’s water system. But after 100 years – with compact holders’ population increasing twentyfold and Colorado River reservoirs decreasing by 70 percent – the river is overallocated and we have reached a crisis stage.

Since agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of global water use, we as gardeners must advocate for responsible and sustainable ways to produce food that does not threaten our soil, water and marine ecosystems.

Primary Resources:
• Clark, Ira G. (1987). Water in New Mexico: A history of its management and use. University of New Mexico Press.
• New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources. “Climate change in New Mexico over the next 50 years: Impacts on water resources.” (Bulletin 164, 2022).

Originally published in the August 2024 SFEMG Newsletter.

Water witch following forked stick in search for water, Pie Town, New Mexico (June 1940)

Photo courtesy Russell Lee/U.S. Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

“Indian women still fetch water from the Rio de Taos, which runs through the Pueblo village. New Mexico” (April 1936).

Photo courtesy Arthur Rothstein/U.S. Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division