New Mexico
News and Brews talks water, climate change – NM Political Report
One of the biggest and most important challenges for New Mexico in the upcoming years will be dealing with how climate change impacts water availability in the state. That was one of the key messages at a panel discussion hosted by NM Political Report on Thursday as part of its News and Brew live event […]
One of the biggest and most important challenges for New Mexico in the upcoming years will be dealing with how climate change impacts water availability in the state.
That was one of the key messages at a panel discussion hosted by NM Political Report on Thursday as part of its News and Brew live event series.
NM Political Report Environment Reporter Hannah Grover moderated a discussion with Daniel Timmons, the Wild Rivers Program Director with Wild Earth Guardians, and Page Pegram, the Rio Grande Bureau Chief with the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission.
“One way or another we need to reduce the amount of water in irrigated agriculture,” Timmons said, of the annual deficit of water in New Mexico. He said the current process of “trying to do this on an annual basis” was not going to solve the problem.
He said this needs to be done in a “smart” and “equitable” way, including finding more low-water-use crops for farmers.
Pegram said there are a few different tools to address this, some that could be done immediately and others that would take other action.
“We can manage our reservoirs differently,” she said.
She noted that reservoirs in the higher elevation and cooler northern New Mexico are more efficient than Elephant Butte, which has high levels of evaporation. And storing water underground in aquifers was another option.
“There’s no evaporation underground,” she said.
Changing what water can be stored in which aquifer would take an act of Congress.
She said that the state is committed to working with all stakeholders to reduce water use in New Mexico.
“If that means developing water shortage agreements… we’re committed to doing that in a fair and equitable way,” she said.
The federal government is heavily involved in water issues throughout the western United States, including New Mexico. The largest part of thai is the Rio Grande Compact, which the federal government ratified in 1939 as an agreement on how to allocate Rio Grande water between Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.
In recent years, this has become a bone of contention, with Texas filing a lawsuit against New Mexico.
“The complaint in the lawsuit wasn’t even about the compact itself, it was what happens beyond the compact,” Pegram said. The issue related to groundwater pumping south of Elephant Butte; water stored in Elephant Butte is considered Texas’ water.
The three states came to an agreement, but the federal government stepped in and said they needed to be involved in the process. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court backed the federal government.
“Now we’re almost back to square one. It’s kind of ridiculous. It’s a ridiculous catch-22 situation,” Pegram said.
She noted that the state is currently 128,000 acre-feet in debt to Texas, and that debt continues to grow. Once that debt hits 200,000 acre-feet, New Mexico would find itself in more hot water.
Timmons said one problem is that New Mexico does not manage water in the same way as other Western states.
“The State Engineer has never enforced water rights in the middle Rio Grande,” Timmons said, saying that the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District has never proven how much water it is entitled to.
Pegram agreed, but said, “Just wait.”
The panel discussed other issues, including the Rio Grande running dry, the role of sedimentation in the Rio Grande ecosystem and the role of snowpack versus that of monsoons in water issues.
SILVER CITY, N.M. — New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed a motion to halt a $1.9 million buyout for the departing president of Western New Mexico University.
Joseph Shepard stepped down as president of WNMU after a state audit found he spent $316,000 of university money on lavish international trips, high-end furniture and other items over the course of several years. During the investigation, the state auditor’s office blamed university management and the WNMU Board of Regents for not upholding their responsibilities and enforcing travel rules.
After this, the board approved a $1,909,788 buyout last month for Shepard.
AG Torrez argues the payment isn’t supported by Shepard’s contract and “is unconscionable as a violation of public policy and the public interest.”
“This payment is an egregious misuse of public funds and a betrayal of the Board’s responsibility to act in the best interest of the university and its students,” Torrez said in a statement Monday. “Dr. Shepard voluntarily resigned, and the Board had ample opportunity to negotiate a reasonable or no-cost separation agreement. Instead, they chose to pledge nearly $2 million in taxpayer money without justification or consideration of the public good.”
The New Mexico Department of Justice is requesting the court temporarily block the $1.9 million payment before a hearing can happen. The NMDOJ is requesting the hearing be held before Jan. 15 – the deadline for the payment – or issue an ex-parte order until the hearing can be scheduled. They are also requesting the court prohibit the board from disbursing the payment until a special audit – requested by WNMU, the regents and Shepard – is complete and a report is available.
Shepard’s buyout is just one part of the board-approved separation agreement. The agreement also calls for Shepard to get $200,000 guaranteed for five years as a newly-tenured faculty member once he returns from an eight-month sabbatical. The sabbatical would begin the day he officially resigns. Then, when he returns, he will work remotely.
The agreement drew ire from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who sent a letter demanding the entire board step down. Before siding with the WNMU Faculty Senate in a unanimous vote of no confidence in the board, faculty senate president Phillip Schoenberg said he heard from the board president that the regents would comply with the governor’s order.
The faculty senate also called on the regents to rescind Shepard’s separation agreement.
New Mexico Higher Education Secretary Stephanie Rodriguez described the buyout as “gross negligence and mismanagement of taxpayer funds.” Her department is also investigating this.
MORE:
New Mexico
‘My staff is spent’: New Mexico emergency management leader reflects on year of disasters
‘That house … is gonna be gone’: A drive through the McBride Fire
McBride Fire in Ruidoso, NM
Chris Bennett, For the Sun-News
This article was originally published by Source New Mexico.
President Joe Biden issued two major disaster declarations in New Mexico in 2024, the first time since 2014 that pronouncement has been made twice in the same year, according to federal data.
First, two wildfires erupted in the Ruidoso area in June. The South Fork and Salt fires and ensuing floods destroyed more than 1,500 homes and caused the deaths of two people. Then, in October, heavy rains caused devastating flooding in Roswell, a disaster that resulted in at least two deaths, as well.
In both instances, and for smaller emergencies before and in-between them, the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management responded.
Disasters of that severity require a multi-faceted response and coordination between numerous officials and local and state agencies. Emergency Management was at the center of all that, running into disaster zones, marshaling resources and fielding questions at angry town halls.
Recently, Deputy Secretary Ali Rye reflected on a year of disasters in an interview with Source New Mexico. She described a tiring year and a small-but-mighty agency that is struggling to keep up with the “before,” “during” and “after” disasters because there have been so many.
“I mean, my staff is spent. I think New Mexicans are spent,” Rye said. “I think everyone is just, they’re tired, and they’re constantly in this response or recovery mode.”
Before 2022, the state had a reprieve of nearly a decade from major disaster declarations, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency data, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic. (Rye doesn’t really count the pandemic she said, “Because everybody got impacted by COVID.”)
The 2022 federally declared disaster was a series of wildfires burning throughout the state simultaneously. On a single spring day in 2022, 20 wildfires were burning at the same time.
That’s the same year that the state experienced the two biggest fires in its history – the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire in northern New Mexico and the Black Fire in southern New Mexico. Both burned more than 300,000 acres.
The trial by fires, while devastating for communities and exhausting for staff, has at least been educational, Rye said.
“I will tell you, though, we have learned a lot over the last two years,” she said. “And I think it showed this year with us being very proactive in areas that we knew were going to get hit, or us planning ahead for fire season, for monsoon season in a more proactive way.”
That meant meeting with residents and local officials in disaster-prone areas, purchasing needed equipment and staging it there in advance, Rye said.
The ongoing fallout from the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire shows the long tail – and cumulative nature – of disasters. More than two years later, even as disasters unfolded in southern New Mexico, staff was still driving all over the state, offering state case managers to help northern fire victims navigate a tangle of bureaucracy and support to local officials still trying to rebuild roads or mitigate against future floods.
“The same staff that help in Roswell and in Ruidoso are also the same staff that help in Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon,” Rye said. “And so my staff, I mean, they travel all over the state to be able to provide the assistance and the resources to these individuals who are still in these communities that are still recovering.”
Rye’s core staff is two people, she said, though the office does employ others with the help of federal grants. “So, yeah, it’s a lot,” she said.
But it’s rewarding and vital work, she said, helping people on the worst days of their lives. The office is hiring, and Rye is hoping to convince lawmakers to increase its operating budget from about $3.2 million to about $5.6 million at the upcoming 60-day session. The extra funding would help attract and retain staff, many of whom are lured away by federal disaster response agencies or elsewhere.
As it stands, the skeleton crew can’t take as much time as needed to help a community recover or prepare before another flood, snowstorm or wildfire.
“We’re going so much that we cannot put in those mitigation efforts the way we really, truly would like to,” she said. “We’re kind of just putting Band-aids on situations to keep the state afloat.”
Patrick Lohmann has been a reporter since 2007, when he wrote stories for $15 apiece at a now-defunct tabloid in Gallup, his hometown. Since then, he’s worked at UNM’s Daily Lobo, the Albuquerque Journal and the Syracuse Post-Standard.
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