Winter 12001-2002 Bulletin

Joint Protest at Drinking Water Diversion

As we go to press, a November 27th Albuquerque Journal article reports, a highly unusual coalition came together to help protect the ‘cultural lifeline’ that the Río Grande represents. The Alliance for the Rio Grande Heritage, of which Amigos Bravos is a member, plus the Socorro Soil & Water Conservation District and ratepayers from the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, jointly filed a formal protest with the State Engineer over Albuquerque’s plan to divert from the Middle Río Grande about 100,000 acre-feet – some 10% of the river’s average annual flow – to supply city drinking water in the next few years while protecting a depleted aquifer. Although half of the diverted water would return to the river as treated effluent, the diversion would cause a major reduction in flows for a river ecosystem already at breaking point (because of a lack of life-giving floods, for example), would mean less water reliably available for agriculture, and could create public health risks because some ‘high-tech’ wastes, such as pharmaceuticals, are very hard to remove. The Alliance for the Rio Grande Heritage, and Amigos Bravos, would like any diversion to be minimized to protect the river and downstream farmlands, and we believe the protest will place greater attention on Albuquerque’s water conservation (still the second-worst per capita rate in the West), and on the development of alternative means to protect its drawn-down aquifer.

Please return to Winter 2001-2002 Bulletin Index.

Return to the Amigos Bravos Home Page.