As Texas erects razor wire fence with New Mexico Rio Grande water becomes leverage

Water wars are hardly new in the Southwest. Texans backed Earth hater Susana Martinez for New Mexico's governor believing they could call in favors after she was elected.

Our Lady of the Arroyo and her man motored to Abiquiu yesterday to find both the Rio Chama and Rio Grande running at bankfull as New Mexico fills the Cochiti Reservoir hoping to charge Elephant Butte near Truth or Consequences. 

Watersheds in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico provide between 50-75% of the water found in the Rio Grande but irrigators in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas take at least 80% of that from the 1,885 mile long river. At least fifteen native fish species and their aquatic habitat once found in the southern portion of the Rio Grande are now gone because the river dries up every year. A compact limits Colorado to 100,00 acre feet and New Mexico to 200,000 acre feet each year. An acre foot is almost 326,000 gallons.

The ancient waterway is also a major source of supplies for some six million people and cities like Albuquerque and El Paso. 

The latest iteration of the legal fights that span decades, is the Texas claim before the U.S. Supreme Court that New Mexico groundwater pumping below Elephant Butte Reservoir shorts the downstream state its rights to the river’s water. This would be a violation of the 1938 Rio Grande Compact, which splits the water between Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. The federal government officially laid out its objections to the special master’s recommendation that the U.S. Supreme Court adopt a compromise to end the lawsuit over the Rio Grande’s water between Texas and New Mexico. [Feds object to judge’s nod to settle Rio Grande SCOTUS case]

But in July, 2021 tens of thousands of long-suffering Haitians made the nightmare journey through Central America only to end up in facilities like the one owned by Tennessee-based CoreCivic in Torrance County, New Mexico. After being brutalized by riders on horseback in Texas some fifty Haitian and Brazilian asylum seekers were subjected to dire circumstances and denied access to legal counsel while detained at a private prison complex contracted in Estancia, New Mexico by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Marshals Service.

Last week, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted a news article about efforts to place razor wire along a portion of the Texas-New Mexico border. “Migrants are entering New Mexico illegally then crossing into Texas,” Abbott claims without sharing evidence in the tweet. “We are stopping it.” [New Mexico Republicans, Democrats at odds over Texas’s efforts to razor-wire TX-NM border]

Due in large part to immigration New Mexico is third in racial equality, second in worker equity, fourth in language diversity and is the sixth most diverse state overall according to WalletHub. 

So, turn off the water: eesy peesy.

ip image: Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge just north of Elephant Butte Reservoir.