NM making new plan for water

Ten years after New Mexico officials last took a stab at developing a state water plan, they are reviving their effort to calculate the gaps between New Mexico’s finite water supplies and the needs of a growing population. The goal, officials say, is a tool to help prioritize state projects and policies to deal with the gaps. But criticisms have plagued the project from the outset, including the charge that the state’s top-down approach is bypassing the voices of local water users. Critics also claim a failure to consider the effects of climate change on the state’s water supplies will undercut the validity of the results. Officials acknowledge that, despite a state law requiring an inventory of water supply and demand, previous efforts came up short. “We concluded we were not doing meaningful planning,” said Mark Sanchez, head of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission’s water planning subcommittee. The new effort is being launched with $800,000 in state funding and a projection by state officials that, if they get another $700,000 next year, they can complete 16 regional water plans and a state plan summing up the findings within two years. The plans will be used to help prioritize spending on state water projects. Once completed, the regional and state plans will be used to prioritize state funding for projects aimed at closing the supply-demand gaps, said State Engineer Scott Verhines, the state’s top water official. But the planning process, still in its early stages, has revived a longstanding conflict between community leaders and state government. At issue is who will control the numbers. In past regional water planning, local communities developed their own supply and demand projections. This time around, the state says it will calculate the numbers for each of the state’s 16 regions...more