The snowpack in the headwaters basins of northern New Mexico and Colorado points to another low-runoff year on New Mexico’s major rivers. The January federal forecast projects flows of less than half the most recent 30-year average on the Rio Grande at Otowi, the key measurement point for central New Mexico, and just 17 percent at San Marcial, just above Elephant Butte Reservoir. With three months of snow-accumulation season left, those numbers will go up or down depending on weather between now and when snowmelt begins in April. But water managers urge caution, saying the runoff is more likely to go down from the initial forecast than up.

The bad news for 2026 also includes extremely low reservoir levels, with little water left over from last year to make up for shortfalls in this year’s runoff.

Other topics on this week’s pod:

· The Department of the Interior’s Post-2026 Colorado River management Draft Environmental Impact Statement

Proposed budgets from the New Mexico Legislature and Governor

When Irving Berlin penned “White Christmas” more than six decades ago, he did not have Albuquerque in mind. According to the National Weather Service, the chances of actually seeing falling flakes here on Christmas are about one in thirty. But that does not stop Rin Tara and John Fleck from hoping, scanning the long range weather forecasts as they write those last holiday cards and record their last podcast of 2025.

The old Western cliché that whiskey’s for drinking while water is for fighting over has always been problematic. Frequently attributed to Mark Twain, it seems that Twain never said it. And research by the Utton Center’s Stephanie Russo Baca shows that sharing water – ensuring that no one goes dry when the water runs low – is a viable approach to New Mexico water management.

In practice, New Mexico’s water law has always had an uneasy relationship with the “doctrine of prior appropriation,” the legal principle that newcomers should have their water cut off in times of shortage to ensure that those who came first can get a full supply. Russo Baca’s work shows how formalizing water shortage-sharing agreements can serve as a viable alternative, keeping irrigation ditches flowing that might otherwise go dry.

In this episode of Water Matters, Rin Tara and John Fleck talk with Russo Baca about how shortage sharing agreements can work, about their cultural heritage in New Mexico’s deep history of water sharing, and about how the state’s laws are adapting in the 21st century to make these new arrangements possible.

This week, Rin and John talk about flows on the Rio Grande, planning for a new federal river management project south of Socorro, groundwater contamination questions, and the future of federal clean water regulation.

Rio Grande

With the irrigation season over and the Rio Grande’s riparian vegetation shutting down for the winter, river flows are up through Albuquerque. But the biggest reason for the high flows is the annual Rio Grande Compact accounting exercise, as water stored in Abiquiu reservoir for the six Middle Rio Grande Pueblos, but not needed, is moved down to Elephant Butte Reservoir.

To track the flows, the USGS measurement gage at Central Avenue is Rin and John’s go-to information source: Rio Grande at Albuquerque, NM - USGS-08330000

And to get the best report on current river conditions, we recommend Anne Marken’s monthly presentations to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District Board of Directors. The audio recordings, including Anne’s slides, are here, and once the meeting minutes are posted, you’ll get a great written summary.

Lower San Acacia Reach

Reclamations draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Lower San Acacia Reach Improvements project is here. There will be two public meetings on the draft:

• January 7, 2026 from 5 to 7 p.m. MT at the Erna Fergusson Public Library, 3700 San Mateo Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87110.
• January 8, 2026 from 5 to 7 p.m. MT at the Socorro Public Library, 401 Park St, Socorro, NM, 87801.

Groundwater

• SourceNM reporting on Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon water contamination
• Geologist Kate Zeigler’s report on water contamination
• Water Protection Advisory Board reports on Kirtland fuel spill

Waters of the United States (WOTUS!)

• WOTUS comment link
• WOTUS definition update

Guest: John Fleck

A decade ago, the Utton Center's Writer in Residence John Fleck published his book Water is For Fighting Over and Other Myths About Water in the West, an exploration of water governance in the Colorado River Basin. Amid an often pessimistic literature, led by iconic titles that Fleck read as a young journalist - Mark Reisner's Cadillac Desertand Philip Fradkin's A River No More, among others - Water is For Fighting Over offered an optimistic narrative, stories of a governance structure adapting to scarcity and change, alongside communities thriving as they adapted to a future with less water.

The Utton Center's Rin Tara read Water is For Fighting Over as a college student, and it influenced the direction of their life, pursuing a law degree studying water law and policy and now working with Fleck at the Utton Center on the challenges of the Colorado River's future.

For this special episode of Water Matters, recorded at a time of deep uncertainty, conflict, and what some characterize as crisis on the Colorado River, Tara and Fleck look back at the book - what it said, what it got right, and what it got wrong - as they discuss the past, present, and future of the Colorado River.

Rin Tara and John Fleck discuss water conditions in New Mexico for the week of November 10.

Rin Tara and John Fleck discuss water conditions in New Mexico for the week of October 27.

A full interview episode will be available later this month.

Irrigated from the Acequia del Llano running across the upper end of his four acres outside Española, New Mexico, Don Bustos' Santa Cruz Farms feels as if it has been there as long as the land itself. A rambling walk through the farm follows ditches carrying the water past patches of asparagus and the last of the blackberries, down one side past some new herbs Bustos is experimenting with - a path the water has traveled for the 400 years this land has been watered in the same traditional way.

But farming in the same way his ancestors have for four centuries means that Santa Cruz Farms must be both traditional and a thoroughly modern institution - rooted in the acequia culture and small-scale organic growing, but also embodying the sort of ever-present adaptations that have always been at the heart of maintaining the institution of agriculture in a changing world. As Bustos explains, new crops, new markets, and new irrigation technologies have helped Santa Cruz Farms thrive.