May 15, 2002
To the Editor of The New Mexican

Las Campanas president Bill Diehl said (in the May 12 New Mexican) “The developer has both leased San Juan/Chama rights and purchased permanent Rio Grande water rights sufficient to serve all of its needs. It uses no city water rights.” The first sentence is true. The second is not.

Las Campanas owns enough Middle Rio Grande rights to serve its domestic needs, and it leases enough San Juan-Chama water from Albuquerque to cover its golf course irrigation. But it does not currently use these rights to supply water to its residents and golf course. Instead, Las Campanas uses water pumped from the Buckman wellfield. This water is pumped under the Buckman permit, RG 20516, which is owned by the city of Santa Fe, and delivered under a lease agreement between Las Campanas and the city.

Why doesn’t Las Campanas use its own Rio Grande water rights rather than lease water from the Buckman wellfield? It’s very simple. Las Campanas’ Rio Grande rights currently have no point of diversion. When, sometime later this decade, a diversion from the Rio Grande is built to serve the Santa Fe area, Las Campanas will be able to divert its Rio Grande rights. Until then, Las Campanas must rely on water from Buckman delivered under its lease from the city.

Pending construction of a Rio Grande diversion, Las Campanas’ Rio Grande rights have been dedicated to help offset the impact of Buckman pumping on the Rio Grande. However, until last year they were never actually included in the accounting for the Buckman offset requirements. This meant the offset requirements, currently around 2,500 acre feet annually, were met entirely by releases from the city’s 5,605 acre feet of San Juan-Chama water. In 2001 the city asked the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) to begin crediting Las Campanas’ Rio Grande rights and leased water to the Buckman offset requirement. This request triggered an ISC investigation which revealed that the water Las Campanas’ leases from Albuquerque had never even been released from reservoir storage, and thus could not have offset Buckman pumping impacts.

These water accounting glitches are not Las Campanas’ fault, but they do make it clear that the water currently being delivered to Las Campanas is city water pumped using city water rights.

Having water rights is not the same as having water. The city has more than enough rights to serve both city users and Las Campanas. But this year it doesn’t have enough water. Since Las Campanas currently gets its water under a contract with the city, it is subject to the requirements in that contract that it share shortages. This is shaping up to be a year of great water shortage, and the city should insist that Las Campanas abide by the contract’s provision that in times of shortage, Las Campanas “will reduce its demand by the same percentage the delivery of water to other similar customers is reduced.”

Neva Van Peski
Santa Fe, NM 87501