Chávez Says City Won't Give Water for Minnows

By Tania Soussan
Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer

9/13/02

Albuquerque won't give up any more of its stored water to protect endangered Rio Grande silvery minnows, Mayor Martin Chávez said Thursday.

"It is essentially water from the mouths of our children," the mayor said in a rejection that sets the stage for a federal court showdown next week.

Without a release of some of the city water stored upstream, the Rio Grande will likely go dry as far north as Algodones later this month, federal water managers say.

That would be a disaster for the Rio Grande silvery minnow, said environmentalists, who plan to ask a federal judge for an emergency injunction on Monday. They want the court to force the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to release enough water from unspecified reserves upstream to keep the river flowing at least through Albuquerque.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., agreed with the mayor's objection to turning over any of the city of Albuquerque's water.

"The seizure of San Juan-Chama water by the courts for the silvery minnow would be a frontal assault on the people of New Mexico and their livelihoods," he said in a statement. "Enough is enough. ... The fact is that New Mexicans paid to bring this water to the middle Rio Grande, and it was not intended to be used for the fish."

River flows and water supplies in upstream reservoirs are at record lows this year because of the severe drought gripping New Mexico.

The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District ran out of stored irrigation water Thursday. The Bureau of Reclamation will be out of water for the minnow soon as well.

The bureau sought to lease 20,000 acre-feet of San Juan-Chama Project water the city has stored in Abiquiu Reservoir. That would have been enough to keep the river wet through Albuquerque until Oct. 31.

But Chávez said the city cannot afford to lose that water, which the city years ago bought from the federal water project. "The water they now want to take is obligated," he said at a news conference.

The city needs the water to fulfill a broader strategy aimed at reducing depletions of the aquifer, Chávez said.

The city plans to begin using its San Juan-Chama Project river water for drinking by 2006. That would reduce Albuquerque's dependence on the aquifer, which is now being pumped faster than it is being replenished.

Even after the city decreases its pumping, it will have a debt of 90,000 to 150,000 acre-feet for water it has taken out of the river through pumping of the city's wells. City well pumping causes about 70,000 acre-feet of water to leak from the river into the surrounding groundwater table every year.

The 20,000 acre-feet of San Juan-Chama water now stored at Abiquiu — along with the city's 48,200-acre-foot allocations of the imported water for the next three years — will be needed to repay that debt to the river and carry out a related water diversion project, said city water manager John Stomp.

Chávez said the Bureau of Reclamation should exhaust all other options before going after city water. Instead, he said, the bureau has "come right back to their easiest source, which is the water owned by the people of the city of Albuquerque."

Few options

But Ken Maxey, area manager for the bureau, said there are not many options left because there is very little water stored upstream that could be used for the minnow.

The bureau is required under the Endangered Species Act to keep the river flowing continuously to the Isleta Diversion Dam, south of Albuquerque, and to meet required "target flows" below that point through Oct. 31.

Water for those purposes will run out within two weeks unless other supplies are found.

"The only place that water can come from is Heron Reservoir," Maxey said.

There is almost 159,000 acre-feet of San Juan-Chama Project water in Heron Reservoir that is used in dry years to supply cities and irrigation districts that have contracts for the water. The city of Albuquerque would oppose the release of that water because it could jeopardize its supply in the future.

Chávez said the city would appeal any decision to take its San Juan-Chama water. "This has got to go to the Supreme Court. This is our future," he said.

While the water in Abiquiu is not in play, Chief U.S. District Judge James A. Parker has ruled that the bureau could use San Juan-Chama water from Heron for the minnow.

Six environmental groups that sued the bureau in 1999 over protections for the minnow filed a motion late Wednesday for an emergency injunction to force the bureau to release more water. Judge Parker will conduct a hearing on that request Monday.

"It's an exceedingly difficult situation," said the environmentalists' attorney Letty Belin of the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies.

In order to make the water it has last longer, the bureau wants to focus on keeping just the Albuquerque reach of the river wet and allowing it to dry up below the city.

Belin said the only biologically sound option for the endangered minnows is to keep the river flowing past Isleta. But she said the groups would agree to focus on the Albuquerque reach if some other long-term measures to protect the fish — such as establishing populations outside the middle Rio Grande — are taken soon.

"We don't want to sacrifice the future for today, but if the minnow can't make it to next year, then that's the end of the story," Belin said.