What will it take to get the Rio Grande flowing again?

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — If you’ve driven or walked by the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, you’ve noticed it’s bone dry. The reason might be obvious to most: We live in the Southwest and have had little rain or snowpack. But as our community, especially farmers, struggle, are our leaders doing anything to solve this issue that seems to be recurring?

“I had been here like maybe a month ago, and there was some water, and then I came a week ago, and I was like, we literally can walk across the Rio Grande,” Kat Walker said.

Even though we live in the Southwest, that’s the reaction most locals have after realizing they can walk through the Rio Grande without getting a drop on them.

Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District CEO Jason Casuga said this year could go down as one of the worst for how much water we’ve received.

“There are communities out there that are suffering to a degree that we haven’t seen in a long, long time,” he said.

Farmers are one of the largest groups being impacted. Some haven’t been able to irrigate their crops in months.

“There are irrigators north of Isleta Pueblo who are 60 days out from the last day they irrigated. Sixty days. Let’s put that into perspective. And so that’s a struggle,” Casuga said.

This is the second summer in a row the Rio Grande has dried up. Right now, an 87-mile-long stretch has no water in the Rio Grande. Casuga said that’s normally in the 40-to-50-mile range.

What can be done?

Casuga believes tools like storing water could help our water issue.

“We have had bad years between the ’50s and now, but MRGCD and others could store water in upstream reservoirs, so in a dry year like this, we would be releasing water,” he said.

But actually doing that isn’t that simple because of what’s known as the Rio Grande Compact. It’s an agreement between New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas that essentially divvies up water from the Rio Grande Basin. It’s law in each state.

“Within the articles of the compact, depending on which article is triggered, you have operational restrictions, and the further that we get in debt as a state to the compact, the more operational restrictions we have,” he continued. “We haven’t violated it yet. We just are behind on our responsibility to deliver water.”

Casuga believes once the state is out of its compact debt, it will have a better chance at managing water. Because that debt means New Mexico can’t store water for itself right now, a restriction water managers wish wasn’t so rigid in dry years.

“I do think there are improvements we can make to delivering water under the compact that would free up some tools to help us manage drought better,” he continued. “Our processes need to be more flexible and more responsive when we have extreme drought.”

He said the state is working with the feds, but unfortunately, it’s a long process. So for now, things will be dry a bit longer.

Hope is in the forecast

Before 2022, the river in Albuquerque hadn’t gone dry like this in 40 years. Casuga reiterated: This is likely one of the worst droughts we’ve ever been in.

“The overall water year is not done yet, but it could go down as one of the worst or the worst years depending on the way the monsoon season shapes up,” he said.

The good news is a strong El Niño is forecast for this year, which could bring some much-needed precipitation.

“In terms of now, what we can do now, we’re really in the hands of whether it rains or not from this point to the end of the year, but I do think things are shaping up that give us indications we can have a much better snow year as we enter November through next March, and maybe we won’t be sitting here in a dry riverbed in July next year,” Casuga said.