![]() ![]() The river dries up, and if you go look in the irrigation ditches after that happens, you’ll see dead or dying fish Kevin Bixby The Chihuahuan desert, where Las Cruces is located, is the most diverse desert in the western hemisphere, and humans aren’t the only ones vying for water in the arid landscape. “The type of quality of life that anyone living next to a body of water should have, we miss out on for the majority of the year because we don’t have that source of recreation.” “When the river is flowing during those summer months … our community comes out in droves to float the river, to fish the river, to enjoy picnics by the river, to birdwatch, to swim,” says Vasquez. Which means in Las Cruces, when the growing season ends, nothing is left in the river bed. Despite making up about 2.4% of New Mexico’s GDP, the agriculture and processing industry receives three-quarters of the state’s surface and groundwater. These were granted on a first come, first served basis to the farmers and ranchers who settled the state, and the oldest rights are prioritized when the Ebid allocates water every year. Here, most of the water is owned by irrigators through a century-old system called “water rights”. In Las Cruces, the Rio Grande’s flow is diverted and drained, flooding into pecan orchards and feeding crops like onions, corn and famously peppery green chiles, for which the state is known. For example, dams release carefully calculated amounts of water to irrigate the green belt of farms that stretch down it. When it began to dry up regularly, due to upstream agricultural development, Congress authorized a series of projects, spanning decades, to control where and when the water runs. The Rio Grande’s flow was always variable, but drying up completely was an extraordinary event until the 1890s. “Every living thing that depends on having water in the desert suffers as a result.” “With the lessened snowpack and the depletion of water resources across the south-west, we’re just stacking problems on top of other problems,” says Las Cruces city councilor Gabe Vasquez. Because of this, the river has had just seven years with a “full supply” of water in the past 20, and only two in the past decade. Due to climate change, hotter and drier seasons are reducing the snowpack that melts to feed the Rio Grande, and rising temperatures are increasing evaporation from the reservoirs. In 2021, the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (Ebid), in charge of measuring and releasing water to Las Cruces from upstream dams, estimated that water levels will be so low they won’t arrive until June and it will probably be gone again at the end of July.Ī finite amount of water flows through the Rio Grande every year, so when there are shortages, every city along the river is affected. But last year, the river didn’t flow until March, and was dry by September. In the past, the Rio Grande would run through Las Cruces for the irrigation season from February to October. “I don’t know what else they can take from it.” ![]() ![]() “It’s shrunk just about as much as it can,” Melendrez said. During the rainy season, the river’s floodwaters sounded like trains. Isaac Melendrez, who was born near Las Cruces in 1934 and contributed to an oral history of the Rio Grande, remembered swimming in the river with his family as a child, while throngs of birds soared overhead. ![]()
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