In a recent article, I suggested the city has about 1,000 acre feet a year it could lease to developers, and, since the Hot Springs Basin is closed, that gave the city a lot of control over development locally.
Max Yeh, my compatriot in the Citizen publication, pointed out that the Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado case decided New Mexico owes more water than it has or is delivering downstream and it is still being worked out how the state is going to meet that obligation.
Yeh also pointed out that how the debt is paid will probably be determined by two state water laws.
The first law is ‘use it or lose it,’ with cities getting 40 years to use water rights before the Office of the State Engineer can consider reclaiming those unused water rights.
I would bet my bottom dollar that T or C has never used its full water right in the last 40 years. In 2007 or so, when Hot Springs Land Development was negotiating with the city for water and sewer services, I think the city was producing less than 1,300 acre feet a year, compared to the 1,650 acre feet in fiscal year 2026.
The second law is ‘priority’ that will likely determine how the OSE will pay the state’s past water debt and future water payments. Yeh points out the city’s water right dates back to 1939, which is way junior to surface or river water rights.
Yeh has studied water law and participated in water-right adjudications locally and in California for more than 20 years and I defer to his expertise.
So, I take it back. The City of T or C has much less control over development in the area than I surmised. I hope the feasibility study the city commission has agreed to have done on development at the airport and surrounding land takes the court case and water law into consideration. Without going to court, the OSE is probably not going to give the city a definitive answer on how much water right it has, and it probably isn’t wise for the city to bring its unused water rights to OSE attention until the law suit is settled.
And the OSE, when and if it evaluates whether to reclaim the city’s unused water, will probably have a jaundiced opinion of the city’s massive water waste, due to neglect of its infrastructure.
A recent documents request reveals that despite the last seven years of intensive water-pipe and system repairs, the city leaked/wasted between 43 percent to over 45 percent of the water it pumped and treated in calendar year 2025. In the first six months of calendar year 2026 the average water loss is between nearly 40 percent to 47 percent.
The city should probably not consider any commercial development until the lawsuit is settled and until it has fixed its water-waste problem. The average water loss for U.S. cities is a shocking 16 percent, according to Google AI, since neglect of water and sewer infrastructure is a common failing among many cities. But most cities and states are not facing the consequences of losing a lawsuit resulting in a big water debt, past and future, and most cities are not in the desert.
The county commission placed an 18-month moratorium on data centers in the county due to high electric and water use, among other factors that may come to light with closer examination of possible impacts of such developments locally.
But there has been little to no push back concerning the Copper Flat Mine’s pending mining permit, and it too will use massive amounts of water and electricity.
The county commission was faced with 60 or so articulate and determined constituents a few days ago at its regular meeting that forced them to go further than their original resolution that was little more than a strongly worded letter.
T or C constituents, about four years ago, showed up in force at a city commission meeting to protest the city’s proposal to build a bridge carrying vehicles and water and sewer lines across the river to allow the Brown family to put in a residential development. The city commissioners ignored them and that bridge is still among its capital projects on its (ICIP) submitted yearly to the state.
The airport development plan was added to T or C’s ICIP for this year’s submission about a month ago.
T or C commissioners about five months ago expressed interest in partnering with Elephant Butte to provide the Turtleback Mountain Resort’s proposed 500 homes with water, wastewater and solid waste services, as discussed during Elephant Butte’s request to deannex its wastewater treatment plant from T or C’s city boundary and to annex it into Elephant Butte’s.
I was the only naysayer at the deannexation/annexation public hearing.
T or C annexed the Brown property into the city limits in the early-to-mid 1990s without thought or consideration of delivering water and sewer services. The same lack of thought went into the seven-square-miles annexed into the city around 2006 or so of Hot Springs Land Development’s property, despite public protest.
T or C’s current city commission shows a similar lack of thought and planning and gung-ho attitude toward development. As a result, the city may find it has promised more water than it can deliver, just as the state did, costing its people many millions of dollars and litigation, with many millions more in expense coming up to settle past and future water debt.