State Engineer closes Hot Springs Underground Water Basin

The language is a little wonky in State Engineer Mike Hamman’s July 5 order closing the “Hot Springs Underground Water Basin,” but there appear to be two reasons for the closure that will disallow future well drilling in that basin indefinitely.

First, the order refers to the Office of the State Engineer’s Hydrologic Bureau’s recent analysis that the Palomas Creek and the Rio Grande are being depleted by pumping in the hot springs water basin. Since both the Palomas Creek and Rio Grande are “fully appropriated,” no new appropriations in the hot springs water basin will be allowed.

Second, the order indicates the hot springs water basin is probably over-appropriated, since the recharge is less than the “appropriated” or potential discharge.

The City of T or C was informed of State Engineer Hamman’s order on July 11 via an email from OSE employee Jerri Pohl, who sent the order and map of the hot springs basin to City Clerk Angela Torres, Utility Billing Director Sonya Renfro, Water and Wastewater Director Arnulfo Castaneda and Assistant City Manager Traci Alvarez. Alvarez issues well permits to well applicants. The Citizen made an Inspection of Public Records Act request and Torres forwarded Pohl’s email, the State Engineer’s order and the map of the basin.

For generations the OSE issued “domestic” well permits to hot springs water basin applicants nearly automatically. Applicants, upon proving they hired an OSE approved well driller, were granted a 3 acre-feet-per-year appropriation. About 10 years ago the OSE reduced domestic well permit appropriations to 1 acre foot of water per year.

Hamman has not been state engineer long. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham appointed him state engineer February 2022. During his short tenure he has been embroiled in the U.S. Supreme Court case involving how water from the Rio Grande is divvied up among Texas, New Mexico and Colorado, with Texas claiming ground water pumping is depleting the Rio Grande and thus shorting their fair share of water delivery. On July 3 the water master assigned to the case forwarded a proposal to the Supreme Court, according to a Source New Mexico news article. Hamman said New Mexico needs to reduce groundwater pumping in a letter he wrote in response to the water master’s proposal. Perhaps the closing of the Hot Springs Underground Water Basin, which is adjacent to the Rio Grande, is in response to this court case. (https://sourcenm.com/2023/01/11/possible-deal-to-end-rio-grande-scotus-case-becomes-public/

About the same time Texas filed its case against New Mexico in 2013 that has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the City of T or C, under the leadership of then-Mayor John Mulcahy, expressed concern about over-appropriating the hot springs aquifer. The city commission decided to close the hot springs basin until a study was performed by Professor Mark Person of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. At the conclusion of the study Person recommended that the hot springs basin be reopened to well drilling and the city commission complied.

Mulcahy tried to protect the hot springs further by making a study of state and federal laws concerning hot springs well drilling, their run off and discharge. He pushed through local ordinances that required each new well applicant to seek and receive a Clean Water Act discharge permit, but Alvarez has not enforced those local ordinances.  Closing the basin will at least stop further hot springs discharge into the ground and the city’s sewer system, the salts in the hot springs water causing problems with the sewer works.