A BOLD AND DYNAMIC APPROACH TO WATER IN SANTA FE

The Santa Fe Association of Realtors recognizes the current critical issue of water in Santa Fe and wishes to work with city and county officials as well as community groups of all kinds to develop a comprehensive water plan that will positively address the total quality of life in Santa Fe, both environmental and economic, securing and managing our water supply without disrupting our economy and changing the character of our community.

In pursuit of that goal, and in recognition of the current challenges before the City concerning our water, both legal and in terms of water itself, we recommend the following:

1. Dare to Launch A Revolution in Thinking by All Stake-holders in Santa Fe about our Water.
We feel a revolution in thinking needs to take place in the minds of all Santa Feans - councilors, city staff, water customers, everyone in Santa Fe. We should move quickly toward aggressive resource acquisition, management, and conservation of water - more than legislative action that limits citizens’choices arbitrarily, disrupts the economy, further erodes the affordability of housing, and eventually changes the character of our city, economically and culturally. This new thinking should make a clear distinction between the resource management of water and growth management. Failure to do so puts the community at risk.

Let’s instill a mindset of achievement and productiveness, in both conservation and development of resources, that replaces the current mindset of fear that “Santa Fe will run out of water” if we don’t clamp down. We’re a town of the American West. Let’s live up to our heritage, rise to the challenge, and solve our problems positively.

2. Empower and inspire leadership in the water company – and fill the current void in staffing there.

To implement such a positive and aggressive way of thinking, we should put a “can-do,” very strong, independent leader in charge of solving the physical, legal, and financial hurdles to meeting the City’s current contracts and obligations - and finding new sources of water - for Santa Fe to remain a viable, dynamic place to live economically and culturally. The water company should be run as a business by a highly trained and experienced professional with entrepreneurial-style motivation, skills and attitudes.

3. Drill more wells now to increase the current estimate of “Total System Supply” supply by substantial amounts from water we currently have rights to.

a. Capture up to a 40% increase of usable water by drilling Buckman wells #9-13 by next May. This means applying for the permits, hiring an effective lobbyist in Washington to expedite the FONSI assessments and seek Federal help and funding of all kinds available, ordering the equipment now that may take months to arrive, and seeking help from the State Engineer and our state legislative delegation for any funding that may be needed.

b. Obtain up to another 40% increase of usable water by obtaining conjunctive ground rights for our surface rights in Santa Fe Canyon and drilling wells to access the 4500+ AF of rights we have there. (Conjunctive rights would allow us to access those rights either from the reservoirs or from the wells.) This will not only 1) reduce our dependence on reservoir water in drought years. It will also 2) protect us from the possibility that we could be required at some time in the future to release our reservoir water under the terms of the Rio Grande Compact by court order, making this an essential tool for using our long-term water supply.

4. Obtain more water rights now

Albuquerque is “eating Santa Fe’s lunch” by buying up rights that we could be getting.

5. Act Immediately to Keep from Losing Our San Juan Chama Rights!

If we don’t act now to a.) obtain perpetual SJC rights, which are set to expire in 2016, and b.) build the SJC diversion, we could lose forever, at any time, the chance to obtain those rights as a result of court orders to a) protect the silvery minnow or b) settle claims by the pueblos. We should work with the County and Las Campanas co-operatively to do this.

6. Hire an experienced lobbyist in Washington to work with our Congressional delegation, the Department of Agriculture, and the Bureau of Land Management to insure we obtain all Federal financial and regulatory assistance needed to protect our current rights, obtain more rights, and get the San Juan Chama Diversion on line as quickly as possible.

8. Work aggressively and continuously with the State Engineer to solve our problems.This crucial and indispensable state officer in charge of our state’s water has virtually begged the City in the past to take actions such as applying for conjunctive rights and return flow credits under the Aquifer Storage & Recovery Act, but this crucial resource has often been neglected, if not actually rejected on occasion.

9. Fix the billing and metering system.

Complaints in this area are endemic, and the solutions needed are elementary and fundamental. How can we manage our most important resource with perhaps thousands of malfunctioning meters and deficiencies in elementary accounting? Employ another can-do, dynamic, independent manager to clean this particular mess up. He or she will have to ruffle feathers and take flak.

10. Implement a meter-based water budget in which every user’s water need is incorporated into a rate structure and billing system that sends clear economic signals to customers. In this framework each water user takes responsibility for his share of the overall city conservation through a set of incentives for conservation and harsh penalties for over-use. The result is to modify behavior over the long term, reduce waste, and provide fiscal soundness to make the system pay for itself, including obtaining new water rights, repairing and drilling wells, developing the diversion plant, and hiring needed personnel.

11. Address water use in new development by conservation incentives and limiting use to .25 AF per year per home regardless of lot size, not by restrictions on permits..25 AF is an amount already market-tested and working in the county. Limits for multi-family units should be lower.

12. RECYCLE! Find innovative ways to make use of the 6000 AF of effluent not currently being used.

Bring the river alive again, recharging the aquifer and possibly increasing return flow credits. Unused effluent alone represents over 50% of the current official estimate of Total System Supply. (Our current effluent is cleaner than Rio Grande water! It has fewer minerals, fewer solids, and less fecal coliform.)

13. Fix the leaks behind the meters as well as those in the main lines.

Recent evaluations that leaks are not as bad as thought seem not to apply to those behind the meters, which by some estimates could be as high as 500AF per year. To find out, in the middle of the night, shut off all uses at places like the Indian School and check the meters.

14. Upgrade the Canyon treatment plant.

It is our understanding that, in spite of upgrades when the system was purchased by the City, the EPA has cut the amount that can be treated from around 9 million gallons per day to half that. Is this true? Can we actually use the water we need to use from the reservoirs at this point when it’s available?

Legal, physical, and fiscal hurdles to many of these solutions exist, of course. But water is our most basic resource, and we must revolutionize our thinking and use every resource at our command to overcome them.

In addition to our business expertise, we are active in the community environmentally, culturally, and socially. We want to work with the City and all of our neighbors to keep Santa Fe strong, diverse, and vital as well as environmentally sound and beautiful.