A Quick & Easy Recipe
for a Living River

Santa Fe River after a rain deluge, Summer 2008

A flowing Santa Fe River would have tremendous benefits for our community, ranging from recreation and education, to wildlife habitat to business appeal, higher property values, and not least, recharge to our City aquifers. For long-time residents, however, a dry Santa Fe River is considered the price we pay for having water in our taps. While everyone agrees that a flowing river would be nice, it is seen as impractical. There just isn’t enough water, we are told, for us and for the river.

When will there be enough water for the river? After the Buckman Direct Diversion comes on line in 2011 is the usual answer. The City’s long-range plan calls for 1,000 acre-feet of water (about 10% of the current total use) to stay in the river, once the Buckman project is operating. The long-range plan is a welcome step towards a sustainable water supply for Santa Fe, and it’s great to have the promise of a flowing river, but there are steps

we can take right now to revitalize our Santa Fe River. Remember that maxim, “One today is worth a thousand tomorrows”? Let’s see what we can do TODAY to help our river! Then when the Buckman Diversion does come on-line, and when we start implementing all those conservation and groundwater management measures, we will not only have a living river, but a really vibrant and healthy river.

What We Can Do Now

There is a simple step we can take right now to put water in our river without incurring any significant loss to the city’s vital water supplies: release a small stream of water from the reservoirs and let it flow down the river. Depending on rainfall, the flow may infiltrate entirely, or it might make it all the way down past the airport, where it will be supplemented by water from the Wastewater Treatment Plant. This would give us a small but continuous river from Nichols Reservoir all the way to Cochiti.

Where would the water come from? From 2004 through 2007, the river received more than 1,000 acre-feet each year because the reservoirs were full. Over the past seven years (not including the exceptionally wet 2005, but including the exceptionally dry 2002) the average annual discharge to the river has been 699 acre-feet per year. This is 70% of what the City is proposing to allocate to the river after the Buckman Diversion comes on line.

We can’t know in advance whether any particular year will turn out to be wet or dry, so we do have to be willing to incur some risk. How much risk? Let’s assume that we start a monthly release schedule that mimics the natural flow pattern of the river (more during the spring run-off and the summer monsoon; less during the winter) totaling 700 acre-feet over the year.

How It Could Work

Let’s say that the City decides to start river flows from January 1st. By the end of March, the river would have received 105 acre-feet of water. By that time we would know whether there is enough snowpack in the upper watershed to fill the reservoirs. If there is very little snowpack, the reservoir managers might decide to stop the flow. The City’s water supply would have incurred a loss of 105 acre-feet up to that point. Replenishing the City water with groundwater to make up for this loss would require only a 2.1% increase in pumping (based on 2007 figures1 ).

Now let’s assume that we do not stop the river flow after March, but continue two more months to the end of May. This period coincides with the normal spring run-off. The scheduled releases (based on 700 acre-feet of annual river flow) call for 107 acre-feet in April and 167 acre-feet in May. These would be substantial flows, and would probably be enough to support the annual fishing derby without any extra releases of water.