Elephant Butte, Biggest NM Reservoir, Now At 3% Of Capacity; "There Was No Spring Runoff This Year"

[hatrack]

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Right now, New Mexico’s largest reservoir is at about three percent capacity, with just 62,573 acre feet of water in storage as of September 20. Elephant Butte Reservoir’s low levels offer a glimpse of the past, as well as insight into the future. Over the past few decades, southwestern states like New Mexico have on average experienced warmer temperatures, earlier springs and less snowpack in the mountains. And it’s a trend that’s predicted to continue.

“There was no spring runoff this year. We started this year at basically the point we left off at last year,” says Mary Carlson, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Elephant Butte Dam, just north of the town of Truth or Consequences. The federal agency runs the Rio Grande Project, which stores water that legally must be delivered downstream to the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, the state of Texas and Mexico.

Drought has moved around the U.S. Southwest since the late 1990s, and last winter’s dismal snowpack broke records in the headwaters of the Rio Grande. Without runoff this spring, by February reservoir levels around the state – including at Elephant Butte – were as high as they were going to be this year. “We had some help from the monsoons,” Carlson says, “but not as much as we wanted, where we wanted.”

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Farmers face other challenges, too, including the growing expense of pumping groundwater and an “insurmountable” number of regulations, he says. It’s also hard to find workers to hand-pick crops like chile and onions, thanks to changes in immigration policy. Then there are the market pressures. This year, he explains, farms around Yuma, Arizona and southern California flooded the market with onions, forcing New Mexico farmers to sell theirs at a lower price. Cheaper alfalfa comes up from Mexico, he says. And even chile farmers have taken a hit: “In Mexico, they can grow chiles and jalapeños much cheaper than we can grow it here, because of the labor, and they ship it here,” he says. “Then, when our chile is ready, the market we could have had is already been flooded by a lower-cost chile.”

Meanwhile, as the average age of farmers in the West keeps rising – most are in their 50s, 60s or 70s – Esslinger questions who will farm New Mexico in the coming years. “It would be like taking your life savings to Vegas and gambling: what young farmer would want to do that?” he asks. “Or, if you’re a farmer from Iowa or someplace else, where you grew up with a plentiful amount of water and rainfall to grow your crops, why would you come here?”

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https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2018/09/25/as-new-mexico-reservoirs-hit-bottom-worries-grow-over-the-future

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

1. Water has been an issue for awhile....

so why is the fracking ok? It uses VAST amounts of water from rivers and lakes and aquifers to make a person or a corporation wealthy on our resources. That's water we can never reclaim. But, the rwnjs still troll about gas and oil as though it were protected by Christ himself. Water has taken an exponential hit since we've allowed all the in country drilling. It's not just the SW but it's really evident there. Solar and wind need to ramp up ten fold.
CORPORATE REFORM before it's too late.

[hatrack]

2. Oh, and on a related note - Elephant Butte hasn't released a drop of water since 9/26

https://www.usbr.gov/rsvrWater/rsv40Day.html?siteid=1119&reservoirtype=Reservoir

[madamesilverspurs]

3. Completely unrecognizable

as the lake I sailed on in the 1970s. Damn!

.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Awwww ... farmers won't be growing crops in the middle of the desert anymore ? I haz a sad. nt