Last year 15 water resource specialists from across the US published the results of their first comprehensive study of consumption and use of water in the whole Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Basin, which runs from Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico, providing the sole water source for a huge area of land. Since we form part of this system (as one of 16 sub-basins in the study), the study gives details of our historical, present, and likely future overconsumption. See Overconsumption gravely threatens water security in the binational Rio Grande-Bravo basin. We are in a crisis from which mother nature is not going to save us. Business as usual is plainly stupid.
Consumption, by the way, is not use. Consumption is what is gone, lost, evaporated. Groundwater in this basin is disappearing at an enormous rate because of both overuse and lack of replenishment. One of the astounding facts to me is that, in the whole basin, riparian transpiration (trees and bushes) consumes more water than all agricultural consumption. This is not true in our sub-basin, but riparian evapotranspiration here is still a very high proportion: 31% of all consumption in New Mexico compared to 47% for agriculture. Another, startling information is that in New Mexico, the cattle industry (forage, growing hay, alfalfa, etc.) out consumes all other agricultural consumptions. That means that the fields in this county or in Dona Ana, growing onions, chile, cotton, etc. don’t compare with the alfalfa fields in the north. Pecans in New Mexico account for 17% of water consumption.
It is a scientific report, so it is thick with descriptions of methods, validations, etc., but there are also many visual summations of the findings you can browse. The discussion of the results is excellent. And it has suggestions of what might be done.
The study is an informative read that should form the basis of your thinking on water. Are you sure you want development, more uses of water, more visitors, more residents? What are you willing to give up for that, because given the situation, you have to give up something? Individual action is not going to solve the problem. It will take civic action, large public action. Have the commissioners, county and city, been on top of this crisis?
Data centers will be our end! Projects Matador, Jupiter, and Ranger plus the Meta Center expansion in Las Lunas will sink us!
Politicians need to stop justifying these huge water consuming projects as jobs programs which they are not! After the out-of-state contractors and laborers leave the state following the completion of these projects, we will be left with huge water debts and electricity shortages.