June 24, 2011 - Silvercity Daily Press scdailypress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scdailypress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Commission official says Carlsbad Irrigation District still likely to have water shortfall
Even with pumping from its wellfields in southeastern New Mexico, the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission thinks the Carlsbad Irrigation District will have significantly less than 50,000 acre-feet of water available for the 2021 irrigation season, a state official said.
Hannah Riseley-White, deputy director of the commission and the Pecos River Basin bureau chief, gave an update Friday about the use of the wellfields at Seven Rivers near Brantley Reservoir and at Lake Arthur.
She said almost 6,000 acre-feet of water has been delivered from the two wellfields to Brantley since October.
Your turn: It s time for water justice in Southwestern New Mexico
Your turn
I have watched, frustrated, for more than 15 years as the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) and the NM Central Arizona Project Entity (NMCAPE) have floundered in their efforts to plan an unaffordable Gila River diversion. These groups have wasted more than $15 million in Federal funding on diversion planning, while millions of dollars in local community water projects in southwest New Mexico go unfunded.
Fortunately, the diversion planning finally came to an end this past June, when ISC commissioners voted to stop funding work on the project. The writing was on the wall: the diversion was doomed to fail since the project cost too much and farmers wouldn’t be able to afford the cost of the water.
Entity not backing down from its Gila diversion designs scdailypress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scdailypress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.