Carlsbad farmers left high and dry

For the third year in a row, the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission’s $100 million system to deliver water to Carlsbad-area farmers has failed. State officials blame drought. Critics say the system is flawed because its design was based in part on data from a period of unusually wet weather. Whatever the root cause, the network of wells installed to pump groundwater to the Pecos River for the farmers’ use will deliver less than half the water it is supposed to this year, according to a mid-July estimate by the state. That has led to farmers in the Carlsbad Irrigation District with little water for their crops, and a legal battle over who bears responsibility for living up to the state’s water rights obligations. The groundwater pumping system is part of a deal struck in 2003 among the state and two Pecos River irrigation districts. Extensive groundwater pumping for farming in the Roswell-Artesia area was depleting flows in the Pecos River, hurting Carlsbad-area farmers who were downstream as well as leading to a deficit in the state’s obligations under the Pecos River Compact to deliver water to Texas. The Carlsbad farmers generally have senior water rights, meaning their farmlands were the first to put the Pecos water to use in the area, and without a deep aquifer of their own they rely primarily on river water to irrigate their crops. Under state law, they have first call on the water over most of the groundwater pumpers upstream in the Roswell-Artesia area who came later and whose pumping was alleged to be causing the river’s shortfalls. Rather than simply cutting off those Roswell-Artesia pumpers, the state Legislature appropriated some $100 million to try to fix the problem. The money was spent to reduce water use in the Pecos Valley by buying up agricultural water rights and taking the land out of production. The state also spent money to build well fields north of Carlsbad to pump groundwater into the Pecos in dry years for use by Carlsbad farmers...more