New Mexico Water Wars and Their Implications
My friends and I spent the last months after our high school graduation making memories together before our college paths diverged. We refused to think of the challenges of adulthood that lay threateningly on the horizon but rather spent our time water skiing on Brantley Lake, on the outskirts of Carlsbad, New Mexico, reveling in the few remaining days of our boyhood. The winters of 2009 and 2010 had been excellent snow seasons and along with an unusually wet monsoon season, Brantley Reservoir was swollen almost to full capacity.
Over the course of the next three years, New Mexico suffered through a period of intense drought. The reservoir shrunk little by little, depleted by the water needs of the farmers and citizens of the local community…