Adjudication – Curse or Salvation?
Adjudication affects and is affected by drought, transfers,
priority administration, banking, markets, compact compliance, treaty
obligations, cultural values, and environmental concerns -- for both
urban and rural residents in the Rio Grande Valley.
Agenda for 2006 Water Assembly
1. Welcome and Introduction [9:00
- 9:10] link
to presentation
Annual Report Of The Assembly link
to presentation
Janet Jarratt, immediate past Assembly President
2. Summary of Regional Water Plan
& Link to Adjudication [9:10 - 9:20]
Elaine Hebard, Water Assembly
volunteer link
to presentation
(1159
kb)
3. Considerations as to why It matters
[9:20 - 9:30]
Janet Jarratt, water right owner
link
to presentation
4. What
is Adjudication? MRG
Status? [9:30 - 9:50]
DL Sanders, Chief Counsel
NM Office of the State
Engineer link
to presentation
5. Pueblo Perspective [9:50 - 10:15]
Ernest Coriz
former Chair, Six Middle Rio Grande Pueblos
Water Coalition link
to presentation
Break [10:15-10:30
6. Current Process & Proposed
Legal Construct [10:30-10:50]
Jerald
A. Valentine, Presiding
Judge
Lower
Rio Grande Adjudication
link
to presentation (151
kb)
7. Summary Of Lessons Learned
From Recent Adjudications, and Summary Of Previous
Adjudications [10:50-11:30]
Peter Shoenfeld, NM
Board Certifie Water Law
Specialist link
to presentation
Susan Kelly, UttonTransboundary Resources Center
link
to presentation
8. Selection of Advocacy
Representatives [11:30 - 12:00] link
to presentation
In order to ensure a balance among interests in our
deliberations, we annually select a Board of Directors with two representatives
and an alternate chosen from each of six advocacy areas.
Lunch [12:00-12:45]
9. Lessons learned from the Jemez [12:45 - 1:30]
link
to presentation
Voices
of the Jemez River (film)
Gilbert
Sandoval, chair Jemez
River Basin Water User's Ass'n
Peter
Pino, Zia Pueblo Trial Admininstrator
10. Facilitated General
Discussion (Lucy Moore) [1:30 - 3:00] link
to presentation
Questions
we might consider:
What
should we do?
What
recommendations can we make?
For adjudication in our region:
*
how do we minimize the time? the
cost?
*
what suggestions would we make?
*
what steps or process might we recommend?
*
what should be done – when and by whom?
11. Wrap
Up & Adjourn [3:00 - 3:15]
Saturday, June 10
8:30 am to 3:30 pm
Dane Smith Hall
University of New Mexico
Assembly
Flyer (pdf 193 kb)
Back
to meetings
Adjudication?
Adjudication affects and is affected by drought, transfers,
priority administration, banking, markets, compact compliance, treaty
obligations, cultural values, and environmental concerns -- for both
urban and rural residents in the Rio Grande Valley.
Can we get beyond the incendiary word — adjudication-- and find
incentives for a comprehensive water accounting? Can reluctant stakeholders
be convinced that such bookkeeping is in their best interest? How can
the multi-million-dollar, multi-decade adjudication process be streamlined?
Unless this fearsome subject is confronted and tamed, there will be
no means of implementing key portions of our hard-won water plan, and
still further reduced likelihood of regional sustainability.
The Historical Context
Regional Water Planning – The all-volunteer Water Assembly was
the key entity in coordinating and developing the Middle Rio Grande
Regional Water Plan for Sandoval, Bernalillo and Valencia Counties.
The plan (available at www.WaterAssembly.org,) was accepted in 2004
by all 19 local governments in the region and by the New Mexico Interstate
Stream Commission. The Water Assembly is now focusing on key implementation
aspects of the plan.
Not Enough Available Water - The Eighth Annual Assembly in 2004 identified
an Urgent Shortfall Reality, namely that continued uses, even without
drought, will eventually prevent us from meeting the State’s critical
Rio Grande Compact obligations to deliver water downstream.
Uncertain Ownership – The Ninth Annual Assembly in 2005 dealt
with the Overallocation of Water in the region, because
the State of New Mexico has committed through permits
and dedications substantially
more water than there is or will be in the foreseeable
future.
Doing Something About It - Now, the 2006 Tenth Annual Assembly will
address Adjudication – Curse or Salvation? Participants will examine
the nature, history, problems, and implications of water adjudication
(or lack thereof) and then be asked to suggest less adversarial and
less protracted processes for reaching agreement about who is entitled
to how much water, and with what priority. If we succeed, we may have
a chance of bringing water management in the Middle Rio Grande back
to sanity.
Background on the Adjudication Issue
Introduction - The Middle Rio Grande is home to nearly 800,000 people
and a fortune in high-dollar real estate. Politicians refer to the region
as “New Mexico’s economic engine,” and yet, those
who live here have no guarantees when it comes to the most basic of
all necessities—water.
Ownership Uncertainty - Who owns what flows down the river? Who owns
groundwater? Who gets to divert? Who gets to pump? How over-allocated
is our fixed water supply, and what kind of confrontations are on the
horizon regarding the legal right to this utterly essential resource?
The Priority Issue - New Mexico’s constitution declares that
in times of shortage, water will be administered by priority: those
who have the oldest rights—those who used the water first—have
seniority over later appropriators. On the early side are Native Americans
and acequia parciantes who first coaxed water from the river or its
tributaries to irrigate crops in valley floodplains. On the junior end
are teeming urban residents of Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Bernalillo,
Los Lunas and Belen, who are often uninformed about the life-giving
liquid that spills from their taps with a flick of the wrist.
Adjudication Description - The law presumes that the rights of all
water users in a specific basin will be determined by a judicial process;
that the date the right was perfected and the specific amount of water
to which each user is entitled will be set forth in a legal decree;
and that ranking each right according to priority will preserve peace
among the basin’s human inhabitants as well as the integrity of
the hydrologic system.
No-Adjudication Description - But what if no judicial determination
takes place? What if a set amount of water is subsequently parsed and
divvied and shuffled to new uses without ever ascertaining the rights
of the system’s senior users? Such is the present situation in
the Middle Rio Grande, where the process of ‘adjudication’ has
not begun, and where there are apparently no plans to initiate it in
the foreseeable future. Instead, water transactions are handled piecemeal
by the State Engineer, who grants or denies requests to transfer water
rights with no assurances: the validity of the transferred right may
or may not be upheld in a future adjudication, leaving both senior and
junior appropriators in jeopardy.
Why No Adjudication - Why has adjudication been ignored
in the MRG? State agencies generally cite the immense
fiscal costs and time constraints that adjudication
entails, but a greater stumbling block may be the prospect
of discovering that too many junior uses have already
been approved, and that in reality, there is not enough
wet water to meet the guaranteed rights of seniors.
There is no doubt that more water use permits have
been issued than the basin can actually support, but
until recently, the insufficiency was camouflaged by
a wetter-than-average precipitation cycle, and supplemental
flows from the San Juan-Chama Project and from groundwater
pumping. It was the diligent effort to produce a water
budget for the Middle Rio Grande by regional water
planners that eventually revealed the deficit in 1998.
Now we know that we are consuming between 55,000 and
110,000 acre-feet a year more water than is renewable.
Undetermined Obligations - So far, New Mexico has managed to remain
in compliance with its Rio Grande Compact delivery requirements,
and urban centers in the middle valley continue to grow on credit. But
the
policy of granting water transfers in the absence of
cumulative accounting could be silently mpairing all unadjudicated senior
rights, including
those of the Pueblos. It could also be undermining federal
endangered species and water quality mandates, as well as widespread
efforts to
preserve and restore the riparian ecosystem. Worst of
all, it may well be erasing the options of future generations by saddling
them with an
impossible debt to the hydrologic system, and many more
mouths than nature can provide for.
Doing Something About It - Toward implementing the Regional Water Plan
and in keeping with its tradition of addressing challenging
themes, the 10th Annual Middle Rio Grande Water Assembly
will confront the bogeyman
known as Adjudication.
Following completion of the Regional Water Plan, the
all-volunteer grassroots Water Assembly is now
tackling yet another difficult challenge for the
Middle Rio Grande Region:
How to Avoid the Impending Water Wars
How to Avoid Interminable Non-Productive Litigation
How to Talk Like Grownups about Water
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