Lake levels remain near capacity

Staff Writer

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Area lakes are resting at comfortable depths after relatively plentiful rainfall this summer and last fall. Officials who oversee Sumner and Conchas lakes are expecting those depths to remain desirable with better-than-average snowpacks predicted this winter.

Sumner Lake is expected to keep its volume within 1 percent of capacity this year, said Mike Cantrell, damtender for the Sumner Dam Carlsbad Irrigation District.

This summer’s improved rainfall totals have left Sumner Lake’s volume at 37,109 acre feet, only 391 acre feet below its capacity. Its elevation stands at nearly 1,427 feet above sea level, Cantrell said, the highest it has been in over a decade.

If snowfall is above average, as predicted, the reservoir should stay at higher than normal levels through next year, he said.

Cantrell said a massive inflow from a flood in 2013 played a big role in raising the lake to its current level.

Last year at this time, he said, the lake elevation was at just under 4,259 feet above sea level and the lake contained 32,613 acre feet of water.

An acre foot is the amount required to fill an acre one foot deep, a little more than 325,850 gallons.

From 2010 to 2012, Cantrell said, the lake had shrunk as low as 1,800 acre feet, down to small pools surrounded by silt, due to extreme drought.

In September 2013, however, he said, the lake was recharged by inflows that reached 32,000 cubic feet per second, about 400 times its average inflow of 81 cfs, Cantrell said. In the heaviest single hour in that flood, he said, the lake’s elevation rose 1.6 feet, adding 2,656 acre feet.

“It was a miraculous inflow,” Cantrell said.

Cantrell said the increased water levels brings both irrigation and recreational benefits to the region.

The rains in the spring also freshened Conchas Lake in San Miguel County, which allowed more water to members of the Arch Hurley Conservancy District in Quay County.

At Conchas Lake, the water elevation is just over 4,177 feet above sea level and the lake holds 147,342 acre feet, but the lake is at less than half of its maximum capacity of 315,735 acre feet, said Michael Vollmer, natural resource specialist.

It has been 10 years since Conchas Lake has been at this level, said Franklin McCasland, manager of the Arch Hurley Conservancy District, which provides irrigation water for 42,000 acres of farm and ranch land for its members. Conchas Lake is the district’s sole source of water.

McCasland said the rains last spring provided 75,000 acre feet of inflow to Conchas Lake, about half of its current volume. This inflow combined with the inflow from rains in late 2013 has allowed Arch Hurley to provide its members with 15 inches of irrigation water per acre in 2014 after three years of being unable to provide any water at all, McCasland said.

“This is our largest allocation of water to our members since 2001,” McCasland said.

In late summer and early fall 2013, a series of storms in eastern New Mexico dumped 4 to 5 inches on parts of Quay and San Miguel counties, raising the level of Conchas Lake more than 20 feet.

McCasland said that with the anticipated increase in snowpack this winter, Arch Hurley will again allocate irrigation water to its members in 2015, the first time in 12 years the district has been able to allocate water for two consecutive years.

Quay County farmers who use Arch Hurley water are harvesting corn, hay grazer feed, sunflowers, milo and alfalfa this year for the first time since 2010, which adds between $10 million and $13 million to Quay County’s economy, McCasland said.

Along with crop income, the economy benefits from purchase of seed, fuel and the need for labor for harvesting crops, McCasland said.

McCasland said about 18,000 of the 42,000 acres in the district were planted with crops in the 2014 season.

At Ute Lake near Logan, U.S. Geological Survey data shows its nearly 3,779 feet above sea level, with a volume of 149,000 acre feet.

The lake is within 8 feet of its maximum level of just under 3,787 feet, according to numbers previously cited by Rex Stall, the lake’s caretaker.