TX Asks US Supreme Court To Hear Water Case Pitting It Against New Mexico
ALBUQUERQUE — The muddy Rio Grande isn't much to look at as it meanders through southern New Mexico to the Texas border, but its waters are a high-stakes prize in a new legal row unfolding between the neighboring states.
This month, Texas asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its complaint that New Mexico has been diverting water it is obligated to send downstream under the 75-year-old Rio Grande Compact. By allowing its residents to sink nearby wells and pump water from the river, "New Mexico has changed the conditions that existed in 1938 when the compact was executed," the Texas complaint charges.
The dispute centers on the Rio Grande Project, a system of dams and canals that impounds water at the Elephant Butte and Caballo reservoirs in New Mexico and delivers it to farmers in southern New Mexico and West Texas. The compact among Colorado, New Mexico and Texas settled years of litigation by establishing a formula for allocating the river's water to various users.
"All we're trying to do is protect the project and its users," says Pat Gordon, Texas' representative on the Rio Grande Compact Commission. "There's been a lot of tension for a lot of years. It seems that it's gotten progressively worse."
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-texas-water-20130126,0,3288415.story
