New Mexico Mercury

Editor's note: This week New Mexico Mercury is featuring stories concerning our state's water situation. The following piece by the Utton Transboundary Resources Center was published in December, 2012 in their Environmental Flows Bulletin. 

Written by: Laura Paskus for the Utton Transboundary Resources Center

In 2012, from mid-June through the end of October, the Rio Grande south of Albuquerque showed stark signs of drought. The river‘s worst day was August 14, when a total of 53 miles in two different stretches were dry.

Of course, it‘s no surprise water supplies are tight. “[In 2011], the water year that ended last September, was the driest observed,” says National Weather Service forecaster Kerry Jones. “This year [2012] has been even drier, making it the two consecutive water years the driest on record.” Those records, he notes, stretch back to before the drought of the 1950s.

Last year wasn‘t the first time that the Middle Rio Grande dried. And thanks to some mitigation measures in the southern stretch of the Middle Rio Grande, 2012 wasn‘t even the worst year. In 2003, 60 miles dried, and in 2004, almost 70 miles. And this won‘t be the last year stretches of the river dry. Even if climate change weren‘t a factor to consider, storage is down on the Rio Grande‘s reservoirs, and it would likely take at least two good water years to boost reserves again.

The drought has put pressure on everyone in the valley—cities, farmers, water managers, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That agency, mandated to enforce the Endangered Species Act, is getting ready to release its ten-year Biological Opinion for the Rio Grande Silvery Minnow.

The Biological Opinion was supposed to have been issued in mid-November, but two days before deadline, Fish and Wildlife Service sent a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers saying it needed additional information.

Minnow flows

Historically, the silvery minnow inhabited nearly the entire length of the Rio Grande and the Pecos River, too. Now, its entire habitat in the Middle Rio Grande consists of a 157-mile stretch. (The fish is no longer present in the Pecos River. And within the past few years, the Fish and Wildlife Service has begun reintroducing the fish to the Big Bend reach of the lower Rio Grande.)

And while most of the fish‘s critical habitat can legally run dry during irrigation season—when water from the river is diverted into irrigation canals—under the Endangered Species Act, a certain amount of water must continue flowing through Albuquerque.

Whatever the Fish and Wildlife Service decides within its 2013 Biological Opinion, there is sure to be controversy. The stakes are high for farmers, cities, and water managers—and also for endangered species, wildlife, and the Rio Grande itself. Environmentalists point out that compliance with the Endangered Species Act is all that kept some water flowing through the Middle Rio Grande during this year‘s driest times. While the river south of Albuquerque was allowed to dry during irrigation season, the 2003 Biological Opinion requires a minimum flow through the Albuquerque reach.

John Horning, executive director of WildEarth Guardians, recalls the high-profile legal battles of the late 1990s and early 21st century that led up to the 2003 Biological Opinion. He‘s afraid that the new framework will not address the Rio Grande‘s needs for flows—and will also ignore climate change.

"It‘s hard to believe it given the science, but we weren‘t talking about climate change at all ten years ago—but it‘s here," he says. "Our snowpack is diminished, our flows are diminished. Ask any water manager who‘s paying attention to the hydrological numbers and it‘s shouting out at us, it‘s staring us in the face."

Since 2003, demands on the river‘s waters have increased, says Horning, and cities have begun buying even more water from agricultural users. "The other thing, unfortunately, is a lot of the institutions that manage the river have become complacent," he says. "And the river advocacy community has not been as vocal as we need to be—and therefore the institutions that control the river and its water think everything‘s okay."

Horning also worries that there‘s a more cynical approach to river management than in the past: "And without passionate courageous leadership that says 'This river is important, it‘s important in its own right,' I fear that the worst could become the future of the Rio Grande—and that‘s a dry river."

Fears of a dry river aside, the endangered silvery minnow did not fare well in 2012. Despite propagation and salvage efforts by biologists (and the release of supplemental water into the river by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation), the endangered fish‘s numbers were at a historic low when the Fish and Wildlife Service updated the executive committee at the October, 2012 Middle Rio Grande Endangered Species Act Collaborative Program.

In mid-June, when the river first dried, biologists worked 25 miles of riverbed—finding and rescuing almost 2,000 minnows. By September 19, when they checked pools on 17 miles, biologists found no minnows. That‘s according to Jason Davis, Supervisory Fish Biologist with the New Mexico Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office. "The latest results in September 2012 indicate the lowest numbers of silvery minnow since 1993," he told the assembled water managers, lawyers, scientists, and stakeholders. He also pointed out that the numbers are similar to those in that dry year of 2003.

From the audience, Steven Platania of American Southwest Ichthyological Research (ASIR) weighed in at Davis‘s request. For two decades, his crews have monitored the fish‘s numbers at 20 different sites in the river. While monitoring in October, Platania said, they found not one silvery minnow in the Middle Rio Grande. In almost 20 years, he said, that‘s a first.

Shifting programs

For ten years now—and at a cost of more than $150 million—the Middle Rio Grande Endangered Species Act Collaborative Program has tried to figure out how cities, farmers, and Texas can get their water and not run afoul of the Endangered Species Act.

Now, as the Fish and Wildlife Service prepares to release its draft Biological Opinion, the Collaborative Program is readying for a change—and will soon transition to a Recovery Implementation Program (RIP).

Although the Fish and Wildlife Service had initially proposed leading that team (as it does on the San Juan River; see the summer issue of EFB), that job is now going to a third party contractor.

At the October meeting of the Collaborative Program‘s Executive Committee, New Mexico‘s Assistant Attorney General Stephen Farris presented notes from meetings related to the transition. The executive committee plans to hire an executive director and contract with a financial management entity (FME). As Farris explained, the FME will contract with the director selected by the executive committee.

According to Farris, the executive director will carry out the wishes of the Executive Committee, be responsible for hiring and firing supervisory staff and contractors, coordinate meetings and documents, coordinate committee activities and public outreach, and provide administrative support for an independent science panel. Members of that science panel will provide advice on how to move forward with the RIP.

But some members of the committee expressed doubts about both the timeline and the budget.

The Role of Reclamation and Storage

During discussions of the minnow‘s low numbers at the October, 2012 meeting, Rolf Schmidt-Peterson, the Interstate Stream Commission‘s Rio Grande Basin Manager, said that the Rio Grande would have been even drier this year had it not been for releases and diversions from upstream reservoirs.

As Schmidt-Peterson explained in a follow-up email: The direct natural flows of the Rio Grande were supplemented by storage releases, beginning in June, to provide water to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD), allow for diversion at the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority surface water diversion dam, and, later, to meet the 2003 Biological Opinion flow target at Albuquerque.

(It‘s worth pointing out that despite the efficacy of upstream storage in moving water through the Middle Rio Grande during times of scarcity, biologists say is the presence of dams and diversions in the river that prevents the movement of silvery minnows beyond their critical habitat. When the river dries there, fish cannot move into a stretch of the river still flowing—something they did prior to the construction of dams and diversions throughout the Middle Rio Grande.)

"By mid-July, the direct natural flows entering the middle Rio Grande had dropped to about 200 cfs," writes Schmidt-Peterson. "That amount of water would have only made it in the river to near Albuquerque even if no one was diverting surface water. There would have been short stretches downstream that remained wet near drain outfalls and where groundwater discharges to the river but, overall, the river would have been drier than it actually was."

He adds that storage releases by MRGCD in late June, July, and early August were responsible for keeping water in the river downstream of Albuquerque. And between mid-August and October, storage releases from the Bureau of Reclamation kept the Albuquerque stretch from drying.

But regardless of how the Albuquerque reach stayed wet during the year‘s driest times, it‘s clear why the river kept flowing, slow and low as it was: The Bureau of Reclamation was complying with the Fish and Wildlife Service‘s 2003 Biological Opinion.