Rolf Schmidt-Petersen
Rio Grande Basin Manager
Interstate Stream Commission
NM Water Dialogue Annual Meeting
January 12, 2007
How Close We came to Disaster in 2006
I didn’t choose the title of this talk, but I took it on as a general assignment to think about that in
a couple of different ways.
First, my focus is generally the Rio Grande Basin. I hear about other things going on in the state,
but as a general statement, my focus is here, and there’s just more work than can I can handle, so
I don’t look at a lot of different areas. But I know from this summer that if I lived in Hatch, or in
Escondida, or in Martineztown here in Albuquerque, I would say that there was a local disaster
in 2006. With the other things I’m going to say, I don’t want to minimize that there were, with
these summer rains, significant problems in certain areas.
[next slide] Second, Norm Gaume told me when I started, “Recognize that variability is what
your job is about.” I had no clue as to what he was talking about. I would tell you right now that I
have a better understanding of that. I’m a little worried about Dave Gutzler’s talk, but I’m
thinking that maybe I’ll be retired by the time some of that happens. We live in a place that has
Otowi Index Supply
2,500
2,250
2,000
Flow (af x 1000)
1,750
1,500
1,250
1,000
750
500
250
0
1940
1945
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
Year
highly variable stream flow. For most of us we don’t see that variability because we get water
from a tap. If you live in a city, it’s a groundwater-supplied situation so you barely even notice if
there’s a drought occurring a lot of times.
But this graphic is annual flow at Otowi gauge. It doesn’t really represent the type of variability
that we experienced this last year—seasonal variability. I’ll just say that if you look at 1940—
this is Otowi gauge near Los Alamos, with the annual flow at that gauge of native water if you
take out reservoir storage. This is time, and over here is the total flow going past the Otowi
gauge, with a high of 2.35 million acre-feet of water in 1941, to a low in 2002 of 250,000 acrefeet of water, which I had the joy of experiencing. This last year, 2006, is not on the graph, but it
will turn out to be a year that’s similar to 1940 if you look at the Otowi gauge: a little more than
half a million acre-feet of water past that gauge. It’s a low number, but it’s not out of the
ordinary for New Mexico, and it says nothing about the seasonal variability that we experienced,
going from a situation of almost no snow pack in New Mexico, with literally from what I can
tell, no snow and no precipitation. Dave Gutzler didn’t really talk about that much. Lower snow
pack doesn’t bother me so much if it actually rains. If it doesn’t rain, that would be very scary
and that’s what we experienced, I think, in 2006. If it weren’t for some snow in southern
Colorado and northern parts of New Mexico, we would have had absolutely no snowmelt runoff,
period. And then we turn around and get these rains in late June that go through July, and all of a
sudden the system just turns around and we have, if you talk to the climate people, an average
precipitation year. It’s just wacky.
So in thinking about this, and about variability and the perspective of various people in the basin,
I’d like to talk a little bit about my perspective as a manager on the Rio Grande for the state. The
first [thing] that comes up is, where are we with our compact deliveries? We’re always very
much concerned if we’re going into a deficit condition with the State of Texas because that
means there are more restrictions placed on what New Mexicans do above Elephant Butte
Reservoir. It also means that the water supply below Elephant Butte is low, and that affects New
Mexico, because as Gary [Esslinger] would attest, the majority of the water supply that comes
out of Elephant Butte is used by New Mexicans. So within all of that there’s compact, and
there’s this idea of how well you do in actually getting water to the people who have the valid
water rights. That’s, in my mind, equally important. And then finally, over the last seven or eight
years, there’s this aspect of maintaining compliance with ESA flow requirements. So I’m going
to talk a bit about how close we came to disaster, or not, and where we are now for each of those
things.
A River Flow Disaster in Albuquerque?
The short answer is that it rained, and it rained
in the right place. The long answer is a little
different than that. [next slide] When I think
about ESA flow issues, and I think about what
disaster is in that regard, this slide kind of
depicts that type of a disaster. This is the flow
of the Rio Grande at Albuquerque by year. It’s
really the number of days in a particular year
when the total flow at that gauge, or the
average flow at that gauge, was below ten
cubic feet per second for the entire day. Like
the other graph I showed you, this goes from 1941 to just over 2000 into 2001, and what it shows
is that from about 1953 to about 1981 there were a number of days—in fact, numerous days here
No. of Days At or Below 10 CFS
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
19
41
19
43
19
45
19
47
19
49
19
51
19
53
19
55
19
57
19
59
19
61
19
63
19
65
19
67
19
69
19
71
19
73
19
75
19
77
19
79
19
81
19
83
19
85
19
87
19
89
19
91
19
93
19
95
19
97
19
99
20
01
0
Note: Period of Record is from
1941 - Present. USGS Gage No.
08330000
Year
Rio Grande at Albuquerque, NM
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in ’63 and ’64—where for over a hundred days out of the year, the flow at that gauge on average
was less than 10cfs. If you get involved with managing the river, you realize that 10cfs is
nothing. We get fluctuations in an hour that are greater than that, and in a day, we get
fluctuations of fifty or a hundred cfs. These red bars mean to me that during that time period,
somewhere in that Albuquerque area, the river was dry. I would show you the graphics for other
gauges down south but they’re just big red blotches, with the river being dry for months on end.
That’s what happened in the middle valley during the 1950s drought, and I think the State of
New Mexico, the federal government with the Middle Rio Grande Project, the MRGCD, and
others, primarily for human water supply reasons, worked to [keep this from happening] this
often. So in part, those projects are the reason we don’t see a similar type of scenario occurring
here in the 1996-2005-time period. We have San Juan-Chama water; we have some additional
groundwater that’s being discharged to the system; and we work really hard for compact
purposes to maximize our flexibility, so we haven’t experienced this type of disaster.
[next slide ] I’m going to talk about
the flow this last year at two places,
the Otowi gauge and the San Acacia
gauge. Otowi is just south of the
highway bridge going up to Los
Alamos, and the San Acacia gauge
is located just below the diversion
dam, about twelve miles above
Socorro.
Otowi Gage
San Acacia Gage
Flow (cfs)
[next] This is actual and projected
Elephant Butte Dam
2000 flows at Otowi. It’s kind of an
interesting graphic and you’ll look at
the scale and wonder why I did that, but it has to do with the next slide I’m going to show you.
Over here we see daily flow
Actual and Projected 2006 Flow at the Otowi Gage
from zero to 7,000 cfs.
7000
Down here is just month of
Actual 06 Otowi flow
6500
the year, and this orange line
Average Monsoon
6000
is actual flow of the Rio
Poor Monsoon
5500
Grande at Otowi up until
5000
May 1, and then it’s kind of
4500
the worst case projection
4000
3500
that the Bureau of
3000
Reclamation, Corps, ISC
2500
and others made as to river
2000
flow conditions at Otowi for
1500
that year if we didn’t have a
1000
monsoon. The other value—
500
this blue line—is the
0
Jan-06
Feb-06
Apr-06
May-06
Jul-06
Sep-06
Oct-06
Dec-06
Date
important one. That’s the
flow of the Rio Grande at
Otowi due to our great summer rains. You’ll notice it really didn’t do a lot above Otowi gauge.
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In fact, the majority of the big rains we got, the high-intensity rains, occurred below these
locations. So it was a good monsoon year, better than average above [Otowi], but not huge.
Flow (cfs)
Actual and Projected 2006 Flow at the San Acacia Gage
[next] This is the Rio
Grande at San Acacia
7000
Actual 06 Otowi flow
6500
gauge, same kind of
Average Monsoon
6000
information. You can see
Poor Monsoon
5500
the flow the river here at
5000
about 500 cfs up until
4500
sometime early in the
4000
irrigation season. Then
3500
the MRGCD is releasing
3000
2500
stored water, there’s
2000
minnow operations
1500
going on to keep the
1000
river wet—this orange
500
here—and then after
0
Jan-06
Feb-06
Apr-06
May-06
Jul-06
Sep-06
Oct-06
Dec-06
May 1, the same kind of
Date
thing: the orange is our
projection of what would happen if we didn’t get a monsoon. And then this is the monsoon.
Look at these flows. There was a time period in there, starting from maybe mid July and almost
going into early September, where we had, on average, something on the order of 2,000 cfs
passing San Acacia gauge every day, with something like 500 cfs passing the Otowi gauge. For a
compact junkie, that’s the best situation you can be in: low delivery obligation and you’re
delivering a heck of a lot of water. In effect, we put 250,000 acre-feet more water in Elephant
Butte Reservoir last year than required for delivery under the compact. Those are estimated
numbers—we don’t have the numbers for March—but I don’t think they’ll be that far off.
Middle Rio Grande Floodway in 1952
Looking downstream from south
boundary of Bosque del Apache
(courtesy of Reclamation)
[next] I can talk about this stuff in regard to the compact,
and I apologize somewhat for this slide, but we didn’t
have significant flood issues off of the river this year
below San Acacia. If you talk to Gary [Esslinger], the
problem wasn’t flooding from the river, it was getting water
from arroyos into the river that was the big problem. When
Peggy [Johnson] talked about money that we spend, I think
on an annual basis, in the few years that I’ve been working
on the river, between the Bureau of Reclamation and the
ISC, annually we spend a little bit more than ten million
dollars, maybe twelve million a year, with the majority of
that being federal dollars to just maintain the Rio Grande
floodway so you can route flood flows through it. What
we’re trying to stop is this situation: this is looking south toward Elephant Butte Reservoir,
which would be here if it had been high at that time but it wasn’t. This is Black Mesa; this is
where the town of San Marcial was before it got inundated with sediment and flooded out. This
picture is from about the south boundary of Bosque del Apache, and in 1952, after the floods that
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occurred in the 40s, the river ended here. You can see, here’s the river moving south, it hits this
part, and then it’s just gone. There’s a little bit of distributary here but not much else; the
reservoir is thirty miles away and the river just stops. If you look at some of the reasons for New
Mexico being in a really bad compact delivery situation in the 1950s, this was a big part of it. It
didn’t occur to me—and I’ve been told by Carl Martin and others at the Bureau—that this same
thing can happen again. You know, you have to experience these things sometimes to really get
it.
[next] This is the river in September of 2005, after that
really great snowmelt runoff we had, and this location is
just in the middle of that earlier photo. There’s some
water there, this is a tracked carrier for moving people
and equipment, and essentially, the river has filled with
sediment. What happened is that with the 2005
snowmelt runoff, that runoff was carrying large
amounts of sediment, and as it moved through this
lower area in the Socorro reach, it had a lower gradient
and it dropped out its sediment and it filled the river
channel for about a mile and a half. The river moved off
into the bosque, we had about one inch of freeboard on
the levees or they would have breeched in this area,
which has happened before. It just occurred to me, if we did nothing in this area, what would
happen? I’m pretty certain that given what 2005 was like, and what 2006 was like, if we hadn’t
removed some of this sediment, or all of it, this would have become lots of little saltcedar in
here, and it would have grown up and it wouldn’t have been a river channel, and we would have
run in to the same problems we experienced in the past.
River Plugged With Sediment
–September 2005
[next] And another one—I’ve talked about this way
Elephant Butte Delta Pilot Channel
more than I need to but—our pilot channel down to
Elephant Butte Reservoir, which effectively
conveys water into the reservoir. Otherwise, like I
was showing you above there, the water would be
like it is in these lower areas, with evaporation rates
of eight to ten acre-feet per acre per year. So those
are the kinds of projects that go on that you probably don’t hear a whole lot about, but if we
don’t do them, the impacts are much worse on people and on the compact deliveries.
[next] This is another picture of the same area. It’s actually quite beautiful—the birds and
everything this time of year in that delta—there’s the channel right through it—the lake would
have been right up here when it was full but it’s not there at all now. There are lots of things that
my office does, and my staff and others do, with the Bureau of Reclamation and Corps of
Engineers on an annual basis to deal with the variability that we have. I think there are things
that we could do better, obviously. You as people can see some of those things and having your
involvement always helps. I think, as being an observer at the Upstream/Downstream
conferences, I have to tell you that in going to those meetings, you’all might feel like they were
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very tough, but I saw them, at least initially, as being tremendously positive types of meetings.
I’ll explain this a little bit.
I really think that the potential disaster that’s out
there—that’s coming—relates to groups like
Upstream/Downstream or even this group not
talking through a lot of these more difficult issues,
and in addition, not getting together while you are
doing that to implement things that you can agree
upon.
I’ll just say in regard to Upstream/Downstream, I
sat in on three meetings of that group, and as I
listened to each of the planning regions, I was
amazed to hear that within their plans and the things
they want to do, there were unions, lots of things these people agreed about.
I’ll mention a couple. There’s the idea of just general conservation—conservation in the cities;
conservation related to irrigated areas; and the idea of trying to save water from the bosque. It
seemed to me that all of the plans have that type of information in them. People can agree on
these things. Also, as a general statement, there’s evaluation of the feasibility of augmentation,
you know—cloud-seeding issues, and probably looking at brackish water supplies. Things like
that that didn’t come up a lot in the discussion, but it’s something that’s in the plans. But as those
meetings went on, the underlying tension about transfers, water rights transfers, continued to
come up, and ultimately got brought up directly by Socorro-Sierra.
I saw that as a threat for a dead-end, for potential ‘disaster.’ Let me tell you why. I think I heard
from the Socorro-Sierra representatives that there really wasn’t value in moving forward on these
mutual goals if this water right issue wasn’t talked about and [brought to some resolution]
because the problems that they’re experiencing would continue to occur. And those would be
that transfers would have really significant economic affects to the local economy, the standard
of living that people were used to in those areas, and it would change the way of life of people in
that valley. And then the issue keeps on being brought up, too, about what’s the water use on that
land actually. If a farmer leaves, and they don’t farm, they just walk away, what happens to the
bottomlands in Socorro. If you go down into those areas you’ll see that a lot of them become
saltcedar, and arguably, that saltcedar is going to use as much or more water than the farmer did.
So in effect, over the long term, by this transfer policy and by this process, are we kind of
holding our water uses level or are we increasing them? At the same time, the people from the
municipal planning regions are saying, “Hey look, we have a growing population. Even if we
didn’t in-migration, we have a growing population. The State Engineer and the laws we have say
that in order for us to use more water, we have to have to have offsetting water rights and the
process we have for doing that is transfers. That’s what there is and if we don’t have that, then
there are other problems that come from it. So you see these two groups just going into their
corners. I thought a little bit about what that means. The worst case: transfers will continue to
occur because there are willing buyer/ willing seller types of arrangements, and a long legal
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history of those, along with property rights and so on, and these local impacts to the economy
that were described, probably some of those would happen.
There would be some short-term benefits in other areas from those, but then potentially, if that
land isn’t worked in some way, we get into a scenario where we’re using double the amount of
water and maybe more than that than we were before the transfer. Under that kind of a situation,
everybody is impacted because if we have increased depletions in the middle valley, it affects
deliveries to Elephant Butte Reservoir. It sets up a scenario that if we’re under compliance with
the compact as a state, we have to start looking at what we can control and what we can’t, and
that starts to impact everybody again.
So it just strikes me that for all of you, the possible disaster—coming close to the possible
disaster—would be for groups like Upstream/Downstream not continuing to work together. I
would suggest that your strength is in diversity, the interests that you represent, and if you can
come forward with mutual goals and bring them to your legislators and the ISC and other places,
that is huge, very strong. That’s a path for going to the legislature and other places and trying to
seek money. If all of you can agree, ‘We want to do these things,’ and there are fifty or sixty of
you in the room, that’s very strong. It may not happen in one year, but it’s an avenue that I
haven’t seen Upstream/Downstream and the Dialogue take.
Ed Moreno: I’m going to ask Rolf to remain available for the panel that’s coming up, but let me
ask if anyone has any clarifying questions for him now?
Charlie Lujan: [inaudible]
Rolf Schmidt-Petersen: I don’t have a volume estimate of that right now, but I can tell you, yeah,
it moved a significant amount of sediment into that delta area, and down into Elephant Butte,
too. There was a lot of arroyo flow, actually, that deposited sediment in the floodplain, and then
some mini-deltas that formed right where the top of the reservoir is located. About every ten to
fifteen years, there’s a sediment survey done of the reservoir and we get a better estimate. The
last one was done about 2000.
Charlie Lujan: [inaudible]
Rolf Schmidt-Petersen: Actually the reservoir came up, so that overall large delta area there that
was some 22 miles long was reduced by, I think, two to three miles. The reservoir—the
projections were that it would recede almost to like one percent of capacity if we had that bad
year, which would have been as bad as what was observed in the early seventies. That never
really happened. We’ve seen the reservoir go lower, like in 2004.
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