Santa Fe County says water supplies will last but buys more rights for $1.6 million

In other words, the county should more regularly buy water rights and keep tabs on county, city and federal infrastructure projects to bolster its water supply, Choman said.

He assumed the role of county utilities director in July following former Director John Dupuis’ departure to the city of Santa Fe.

In a recent estimation of county water supply, he projected the county could buy 680 acre-feet of additional annual water rights by 2040, or about a 29% increase in its existing water rights.

The County Commission headed down that path at its March 12 meeting, unanimously approving a $1.6 million purchase of about 44.8 acre-feet per year of water rights from developer Suerte del Sur.

The cost includes an $80,600 commission to broker Bogle Realty and comes to $36,000 per acre-foot, or about 326,000 gallons.

Santa Fe County last bought water rights about three years ago for nearly half that price — about $19,000 per acre-foot — but the price of water has increased many-fold over the past few decades and will probably continue to increase as demand rises, the county’s contract water attorney, John Utton, told commissioners.

“The city is going away from acquiring water rights,” Utton said. “They’re getting very difficult and expensive.”

County spokeswoman Olivia Romo declined to allow a reporter to interview Utton for this story.

Choman called $36,000 per acre-foot a “very fair market price” for Rio Grande water rights dating before 1907, when New Mexico’s Territorial Legislature passed laws that set the groundwork for the state’s water regulations today. Pre-1907 rights hold seniority over more recently acquired rights if there’s not enough water to go around.

A series of droughts — which resulted in a “critical and immediate need for water,” according to a county water management plan from 2009 — in part spurred the city and county of Santa Fe to boost their water supplies over the past 20 years.

The county’s water, like the city’s, now primarily comes from surface flows diverted from the Rio Grande by the Buckman Direct Diversion. That water is pumped uphill 11 miles to the Buckman water treatment plant west of Santa Fe.

The diverted water includes both “native” Rio Grande water and San Juan-Chama Project water delivered to the Rio Grande via the Rio Chama from the San Juan River in southern Colorado through a series of tunnels and diversions.

Before the city and county collaborated to design and build the Buckman Direct Diversion, which came online in 2011, the city supplied the county with water, and “much of that was groundwater,” Romo wrote in email.

The diversion has since allowed the overused regional aquifer to recover.

Under a mutually beneficial “shared pool” agreement, the city and county can essentially freely trade each other’s native and San Juan-Chama water flowing through the Buckman Direct Diversion.

Under another agreement, the county can also buy a chunk of water from the city each year, 1,350 acre-feet, but has considered that a “backup supply” because it is expensive, Choman wrote in a memo to commissioners.

In total, including the “backup supply,” the county and developers have rights to about 4,055 acre-feet per year for county use, not including the recently authorized purchase, Choman noted.

Meanwhile, demand from county customers in 2023, at 1,513 acre-feet, sat at roughly one-third of the county’s supply.

On paper, the county has committed to provide customers 96% or 97% of its total supply, or 3,927 acre-feet per year.

However, that does not reflect what the county must deliver because it includes requests from developers for projects that may never materialize, Choman said.

He projected the county should have a healthy excess supply of water even if demand from county customers increases 7% per year through 2040, a “very aggressive” estimate or “worst-case scenario,” he said, that puts estimated demand at 4,822 acre-feet per year in 2040.

That’s in part because the construction of the Pojoaque Basin Regional Water System, serving communities on a stretch from Española to Santa Fe, could substantially increase the county’s water supply, Choman said.

The water system is a result of decades of water-rights litigation, known as Aamodt, and will supply up to 4,000 acre-feet per year from the Rio Grande to the Nambé, Tesuque, San Ildefonso and Pojoaque pueblos and other county customers in the Pojoaque Valley.

The county may also be able to bolster water supplies by enhancing reuse: Many utilities are looking into reuse “trying to get two times or more out of their water rights,” Utton told commissioners.

In Santa Fe County, that would require expanding a treatment plant south of the city, near the Penitentiary of New Mexico. It opened in 2022 and can treat up to 500,000 gallons of water per day, Romo wrote in an email.

Water now treated by the plant is “just below” potable, Choman said.

A wastewater treatment master plan, which will include designs for an addition to the plant to ensure treated water is potable, will finish later this year, he said.

The city of Santa Fe’s proposed San Juan-Chama return flow project also would benefit the county utility.

The project would construct a 17-mile pipeline to send effluent from the city’s wastewater treatment plant to the Rio Grande. Santa Fe County would be entitled to 7% of the water reclaimed, Choman wrote.

The pipeline has sparked some controversy, not only because it would reduce flows in the lower Santa Fe River, which now receives effluent, but also because critics say the city’s aging wastewater plant would need substantial upgrades to prevent tainted water from entering the Rio Grande.

Over the next 12 months, the county utility division will develop a 40-year water plan and, in conjunction with the city, a water resource plan extending to 2100, Choman said.

Those plans will address broader concerns about how the area — and private well owners — would fare in an unexpected event such as a severe drought, he said.