By April Reese, Land Letter, January 25, 2007

New Mexico - the nation’s third-driest state - could see more water deliveries to rural areas, new steps toward settling long-standing American Indian water rights settlements and healthier riparian ecosystems under a new package of water initiatives recently unveiled by Gov. Bill Richardson (D).

Richardson, who announced last week that he plans to run for president in 2008, has declared 2007 the “Year of Water.” The $100 million package - one of the most ambitious among arid Western states - places a heavy emphasis on funding new infrastructure and settling American Indian water rights claims.
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In an unprecedented move, Richardson is also asking the Legislature to set aside $7.5 million for river ecosystem restoration in areas throughout the state. Furthermore, the package includes $5 million dollars to acquire or lease more water rights for the Strategic Water Reserve, created by the Legislature two years ago to help the state meet compact obligations and protect instream flows for endangered species such as the silvery minnow.

The reserve allows the state to purchase or lease water rights from willing sellers to create a publicly held “pool” of rights that could then be tapped to help the state meet those needs, which the state has had difficulty doing in the past. Most of the water rights for the reserve would likely come from farmers and ranchers, who hold 80 percent of New Mexico’s water rights.

Fred Nathan, director of Think New Mexico, a think tank that first proposed the idea of a water reserve, said he was glad to see the additional funding for the project in the governor's water package - even though no one is really sure how much money will be needed to meet compact obligations and endangered species demands in the future.

“To be candid, we’d need a crystal ball to know how much money would be needed to address those two issues in the coming years,” he said. “But we feel the $5 million that’s been already been appropriated [in previous years] and the $5 million the governor is seeking is a very hefty down payment to get this started.”

The state has already begun to lease some water rights from farmers to build up the water reserve, said Estevan Lopez, director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. On the Pecos River, for example, the state recently leased a small amount of water to help keep water in the river for the Pecos blunt-nose shiner.

Denise Fort, an environmental law professor at the University of New Mexico who serves on the state’s water trust board, which vets funding requests for water projects, said she was encouraged by the governor’s initiatives, particularly the support for stream restoration. “This is the first time in New Mexico we've had an explicit acknowledgement that we need to keep water in the streams,” she said.