Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
DEPUTY EDITOR
If you don’t have water, nothing else matters.
That pretty much sums up how important water is to our overall well-being and success as humans on the planet. With the recent crisis in California, one has to wonder what would happen if the Ogallala aquifer — our only water source — dries up.
“We did an analysis for a study and looked at what it would cost to chase the water,” said Barbara Crockett of the engineering firm CH2M Hill.
“Chasing water,” Crockett said, means finding enough underground water to maintain the current population and businesses as they operate today.
The cost? It rings at $1.5 billion.
“You’ve got to keep in mind that you’re chasing water that is quickly being depleted. The groundwater isn’t sustainable,” Crockett said.
Crockett said Texico is chasing water, and it’s costing that community around $900,000 to buy two agricultural wells to use for municipal purposes. Three of the town’s municipal wells, Crockett said, are declining.
“What’s interesting is they’ve been conserving water, so their water use is going down, but the municipal wells can’t keep up,” Crockett said. “So they’re chasing water … They only have 1,100 people that live in Texico, and they’re spending almost $900,000 in a short period of time to have water to serve their citizens. It’s getting too expensive to chase water.”
According to a 2013 analysis conducted by Charles Wilson, a consultant in Santa Fe, Portales will be facing dry wells in 15 years.
“(Wilson) has looked at what they call the ‘youthful life’ of their existing well fields that serve Portales,” Crockett said. “And, you know, the challenge that we have is you can’t wait 15 years to address the issue, because then it’s too late.”
California is facing a similar — albeit worse — issue, and has recently issued its first mandatory water restrictions, according to an article by The New York Times.
“Gov. Jerry Brown, in an executive order, directed the State Water Resources Control Board to impose a 25 percent reduction on the state’s 400 local water supply agencies, which serve 90 percent of Californians, over the coming year,” the article states.
While eastern New Mexico isn’t in a drought that severe, there’s no denying we are in a drought.
“We are not in that type of a drought situation,” said Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority Chairwoman Gayla Brumfield. “But we do need to conserve water. We’re not out of our drought, so we need to do everything that we can to conserve our water and work on reuse as well as bring the Ute pipeline down (from Ute Lake in Logan). Our moisture (from rain and snow) has helped, but we’re not out of the woods yet.”
The Ute Lake water pipeline, Brumfield said, is “going to happen.”
“Let’s say that it didn’t,” Brumfield hypothesized, “you’re jeopardizing all of our large employers including Cannon Air Force Base. That’s why we’re working night and day to complete it. They’ve known it’s going to provide water to the eastern part of the state (since the Ute Reservoir was created). It’s a sustainable piece of our water supply.”
And if it fell through for whatever reason, residents in the area wouldn’t be faced with only a lack of water — there’s a huge economical impact, too.
“The economy is going to start being impacted as you run out of water. I’m sure it’s impacting California,” Crockett said. “If you didn’t have water to run your business, you know, you would have to close up and move or do something else. Water is the most important resource on our planet, but I think it’s the most undervalued resource on our planet. We have to have water to live.”
Crockett stressed that the challenges we are facing in eastern New Mexico aren’t limited to just this area, but the Southwest as a whole.
According to Crockett, other larger cities in the Southwest that are switching from groundwater to surface water include Tucson and Denver. Santa Fe and Albuquerque, she said, are switching over to rely on water from the Rio Grande, because it is a renewable surface water source.
“It’s a lot of people, and they’re going from ground to surface because it’s renewable,” Crockett said. “We live in an arid climate, and that’s the challenge we face.”
The water eastern New Mexico currently relies heavily on is the Ogallala aquifer, an underground supply of water that eastern New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas sit on top of, according to Crockett. The aquifer, Crockett said, drops around two to six feet per year, and only regains a few inches annually.
Most of the water, she said, is being used for agricultural purposes. Only 5 percent of water is being drawn from the aquifer by municipalities and non-ag industries.
“The agricultural industry is long established and very important to the community, but that’s what uses the majority of the water out of the aquifer,” Crockett said.
But not everything is “gloom and doom,” Crockett said. She has seen a vast improvement in the last five to 10 years since working with Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority in conservation and water reuse programs.
“Everyone has made tremendous progress in cutting back on how much water they use,” Crockett said. “Clovis, Portales and Cannon Air Force Base are reusing wastewater already, or in the process to expand treatment centers to be able to do so. There’s always more that can be done. They’ve made great headway. I’m amazed.”
Brumfield said the water authority is continuing to “work diligently for the Ute water project and lobbying efforts,” and mentioned that EPCOR — Clovis’ water supplier — has incentives for people with low-flow toilets to help conserve water.
“Conserving water is so critical,” Brumfield said. “Conserving water is definitely what we need to be doing. That’s why we’re doing reuse and xeriscaping.”
The long-term goal, she said, is completing the Ute water pipeline.
“Conservation and effective groundwater use is part of the water portfolio that we need, all of it together,” Brumfield said.
“It’s so important that this is completed because we’ll have a renewable supply,” Crockett said, “but it’s part of what we call the water portfolio. (Ute) is the foundation. Then you have the reuse that Clovis and Portales are doing for wastewater. But you need the strong foundation of the renewable supply. It’s not all about gloom and doom. It’s a challenge and it can happen. We’ve worked on projects where it has happened, and we’re working towards the same thing.”
