Group expresses support for local drought planning - Roswell Daily Record

The Pecos Valley Artesian Conservancy District Board of Directors has voted unanimously to support the city’s efforts to begin planning for ways to deal with drought.

The group approved writing a letter of support for the city’s planned grant application to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that will enable it to start considering programs, projects and methods for conserving water and dealing with drought conditions.

“I think we need to be at the table with them,” said Chair Greg Alpers.

The Roswell City Council is due to consider whether to submit the grant for up to $200,000 at its 6 p.m. Thursday meeting. The Finance Committee recommended approval at its March 3 meeting. The Water-
SMART Drought Contingency Planning grant program requires 50% matching funds from the city.

PVACD Superintendent Aron Balok called such planning “overdue” from his perspective. He added that the district has not been asked by Robert Glenn, deputy superintendent for water maintenance and transmission for the city, to provide any funding at this point. Instead, the district that serves about 100,000 water users in Chaves and Eddy counties has been asked to submit the letter of support and to enter conversations with city officials about how to encourage water conservation.

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“One of the things he (Glenn) pointed out is that the Roswell area, the city of Roswell, has a pretty high per capita water use,” said Balok. “I think people’s impressions of our water quantity is that the district has been doing a pretty good job and they don’t need to worry about it. The downside of that is that people don’t worry about it.”

He said he would like for city decisions to be tied to information about aquifer levels, as determined by the district’s monitoring wells.

Some members of the board also said that they would like to see actions taken to curtail the drilling of domestic wells in the area or perhaps to increase water rates or develop a tiered payment system so that people or organizations that use a lot of water for “extravagant” uses pay higher rates. Balok said the tiered system is in use in Santa Fe, developed in response to a critical water need. A recent Santa Fe city report described the city’s current water supply as stable.

A.J. Olsen, one of the group’s lawyers, said that he thinks that maintaining good water infrastructure is the most important component of water conservation, more important than domestic well restrictions or penalties for people wasting water.

Stuart Joy, one of the directors, said that the planning also will be important to help the area grow.

“This is going to be motivated by drought, but what goes into the same thought process is growth,” he said. “Is the growth plan for our municipalities or our economies here just to buy more water from other users, or is it, ‘Let’s get more efficient so we can grow out of what we already have.’ So there are other things, but, in doing that, we can also make ourselves more drought resistant, too.”

According to the WaterSense program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, New Mexico relies more on groundwater than any other U.S. state. Groundwater accounts for about 87% of the state’s water. The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer also has written that the state has been in a long-term drought cycle that began in 1996.

The planning grants are one of three drought resiliency grant programs offered by the Bureau of Reclamation. Other grants also pay for infrastructure or conservation projects.

Lisa Dunlap can be reached at 575-622-7710, ext. 351, or at reporter02@rdrnews.com.

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