On June 13, 1962, Congress passed the Public Law 87-483 which was then signed by President John F. Kennedy, allowing for the diversion of water from natural flow of the Colorado River, into the Rio Grande River Basin. One result of that law was a US Bureau of Reclamation project known as the San Juan-Chama Project, a collection of dams, underground tunnels and siphons that drain up to 96,000 acre-feet of water out of the San Juan River basin and deliver it to New Mexico, to be used for municipal water and agricultural irrigation. About 56% of the diverted water eventually makes its way to the City of Albuquerque, with another 24% used by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, 8% by the Jicarilla Apache Tribe, and 7% by the City of Santa Fe. Various other water agencies consume the remainder.
Little Oso Diversion Dam on the Little Navajo River in southeastern Archuleta County.
The Rio Grande River has its headwaters near Creede, Colorado — flowing southward — and continues on through the state of New Mexico, and then forms the boundary between Texas and Mexico until it empties into the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, Texas. Since 1928, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico have been negotiating each government’s political allocation of the Rio Grande River water, and Public Law 87-483 was an attempt to ensure that Colorado contributed its fair share of water downstream to New Mexico. Rather than limit the amount of water Colorado takes out of the Rio Grande River, however, the solution was to spend millions of dollars on water infrastructure, to divert water from San Juan River tributaries and transfer it to the Rio Grande Basin. In essence, that 1962 decision allowed the two largest cities in arid New Mexico to grow much larger than they likely would have grown, had San Juan River water not been made available to them.
The water extracted from the San Juan River basin comes from the Blanco, the Navajo and the Little Navajo — three rivers with their headwaters in Archuleta County. The construction of 28 miles of tunnels provided jobs for numerous Pagosa Springs residents during the 1960s. Naturally, those jobs disappeared when the project was completed. A considerable amount of water has also disappeared from the San Juan River Basin, and thus, also from the Colorado River. The water presumably benefited the people of New Mexico.
Here’s a 4-minute video posted six years ago by the Chama Peak Land Alliance, entitled “San Juan-Chama Watershed Partnership Motion Story”.
As the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) Board of Directors began the process of developing a “Strategic Plan” two years ago — to better define its taxpayer-funded efforts over the coming decade — the Board decided to use, as a model for its new plan, a 2016 strategic plan developed by the Gunnison Water Conservancy District.
(Disclaimer: I currently serve on the SJWCD Board of Directors as an appointed volunteer, but this editorial series does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Board as a whole, nor of any individual Board members other than myself.)
The Gunnison district performs somewhat different functions in its local community, compared to SJWCD, due to its involvement in Taylor Reservoir operations and other projects, but SJWCD still felt that portions of that 2016 plan could provide a blueprint for SJWCD’s plan. You can download the 64-page Gunnison plan here.
One specific statement in the Gunnison plan was adopted nearly word-for-word into the SJWCD draft plan:
The Board opposes any new transfers of water from the Gunnison River and its tributaries upstream of Blue Mesa Dam to other basins because such transfers would interfere with existing beneficial uses of water, damage economic stability, and reduce environmental quality within the District.
The SJWCD version:
The Board opposes any new transfers of water from the Upper San Juan River and its tributaries upstream of Navajo Reservoir to basins outside of the Upper San Juan River Basin. We believe such transfers would interfere with existing beneficial uses of water, damage economic stability, and reduce environmental quality within the District and as such form the basis for our opposition.
Transbasin diversions, also known as transmountain diversions, are exemplified by the San Juan-Chama project — where water is transported via tunnels, pipelines or ditches from one river basin, over (or through) a mountain range, to a different river basin. Most of Colorado’s transmountain diversions remove Close to 90% of Colorado’s population lives along the Front Range, on the east side of the Continental Divide, but 80% of the state’s precipitation — rain and snow — falls along the Western Slope — the half of the state to the west of the Continental Divide. Since the late 1800s, transmountain diversions have been transferring water from the Western Slope to thirsty farms and urban areas along the Front Range.
Today, 12 major transmountain water diversions are removing water from the Colorado River Basin — about 500,000 acre-feet of water annually, roughly enough water to cover the entire Denver metro area five feet deep in water.
Water is used and reused multiple times as it flows downstream, so moving water completely out of a river basin through a transmountain diversion means the loss of water can be felt in multiple ways. But one of the main concerns about removing water from the Colorado River Basin, lately, is related to a 1922 agreement — the Colorado River Compact — wherein the “Upper Basin States”, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, must allow approximately 7.5 million acre-feet of water to flow down the Colorado River, each year, to a gauging station at Lee’s Ferry, just west of Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border.
If the numbers I am seeing are correct, and if, indeed, the Colorado River could previously, in 1922, provide 7.5 million acre-feet of water downstream to California, Arizona, and Nevada, then the diversion of 500,000 acre-feet of water out of the Colorado River basin — half a million acre-feet — can easily be viewed as problematic.
It could be especially problematic if, as scientists are suggesting, the American West is going to become hotter and drier.