The City of Truth or Consequences has water rights for 2,751.281 acre feet of water it can use per year in the Hot Springs Basin and is using about 1,650 acre feet per year, which leaves 1,000 acre feet a year available for development.
That puts the city in the driver’s seat for development and gives it a lot of power to choose what industries to let in or block, because it is the biggest water-right holder in the city.
The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer closed the Hot Springs Basin on July 5, 2023 to all but 1-acre-foot-per-year domestic water well applications–no new water use applications for commercial development will be accepted.
That means commercial development must find some entity that will lease or sell their water right in the Hot Springs Basin. Buying or leasing from an open basin won’t work, because water law doesn’t allow the transfer of water rights to wells outside of the originating basin.
For more than 20 years I have watched successive T or C city commissioners get into power based on their pro-business, pro-development, pro-tourism platforms and the current city commission is no exception.
At the June 24 city commission meeting, commissioners gave city staff permission to apply for state Economic Development Department money to do a “feasibility” study on development around the airport.
The Hot Springs Land Development tried to do the same thing from around 2007 until the summer of 2023, when it auctioned off its seven square miles around the airport. It paid $200,000 up front to secure 25 percent of the city’s remaining water system and wastewater system capacity. But experimental well development out there resulted in protests by senior existing water-right holders, making it clear that any new commercial well would result in a 20-year adjudication process. That meant the city needed to deliver on its promise, according to HSLD, but not according to the city. HSLD sued, but the lawsuit didn’t result in making the city perform.
The city has one existing well at the T or C Municipal Airport. I recently requested the well-production logs, and if “well # 1” is the airport well, it produced 1.317 acre feet last fiscal year, from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. City Manager Gary Whitehead is going to confirm if it is the airport well some time this week.
The airport well water tastes “unpleasant,” according to Assistant City Manager Traci Alvarez, who was asked about it at the June 24 meeting.
HSLD wanted to put a hotel out there, among other big water-use developments, such as a NASCAR race track.
Whitehead told the Citizen that the city would only allow low-water-use development. He also said the city would not try to run eight or so miles of sewer pipe to the airport to connect it to the city’s water and wastewater plants.
The feasibility study, said Whitehead, will also consider water availability in its assessment.