March
9, 2017 -
Magdalena school board amends water grab protest... At the regularly
scheduled Feb. 13 meeting the board had discussed in executive session withdrawing
a letter filed with the Office of the State Engineer protesting the Augustin Plains
Ranch LLC planned project to pump water from the San Augustin aquifer. Chieftain
January
30, 2017 -
Here
it comes - NM will attempt to turn over government agencies and projects to private
for-profit companies... like charter schools, for example. More on these bills
later: They will aid ARP in getting approval for the project with government support.
Read the article below on National Security Projects.
Relating
to public projects; enacting the public-private - partnerships act.... HB275
and
SB143
Related:
P3 legislation was attempted in 2013 ...
HB405
under House Taxation & Revenue Committee.and HB560
and in 2015 HB299
January 27, 2017 -
There is a report floating around called the "Emergency & National Security
Projects", (link below) in which APR is listed as one of 50 top national
security projects.
Other
projects in the report are massive and the patronage of the government.
Download
the document here
Does
it sound reasonable the Federal Government would be interested in a relatively
small and very isolated private project? Probably not, but it would be good
to know how the APR ended up on the report.
What
we know so far…
The
story, originated with McClatchy DC, which is part of wider network of journalists
who work in 14 states and 29 communities. Read the original story here
Trump
team compiles infrastructure priority list 
The Albuquerque Journal picked up the story and on investigation pulled it, saying
.. "The original post on abqjournal.com was removed late Tuesday night after
a Politico Pro report questioned the document's authenticity." ... The Journal
called the White House: "It is not a White House policy document", White
House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in an email ... responding to a Journal
request for comment.
The
Journal story is an important read to understand the sequence of events and latest
information:
WH
disavows infrastructure priorities document
McClatched
followed up on the story with:
List
of 50 infrastructure projects used by Trump transition team came from consulting
firm
PolitocoPro,
mentioned above, may have originated the story and document, then backed off.
As to PoliticoPro's reliability as a source of real news note that US Dept of
Education wanted to buy a subscription to Politco Pro but did not....price tag
too high and seemed to be based on "whatever the traffic would bear."
The
complete story above for download
January
18, 2017 -
Water just like air
is critical to our existence; we can’t live without it. Good potable groundwater
is a quality of life essential. As a commodity its value varies with its
scarceness. Water laws governing water varies from state to state and country
to country. People fight over water, states fight over water, and countries fight
over water. Generally the rule for groundwater is that it is a defacto property
right, if located under your land. In New Mexico the state controls groundwater
through a permitting system by regulating the amount of withdrawal. However, if
there are too many landowners vying for a limited amount of water the water is
apportioned by need or a water master. So by its scarcity it has become more valuable.
...
Continue
reading
or Download
the article
January
17, 2017 -
New Mexico's Land Grant
and Severance Tax Permanent Funds: Renewable Wealth from Non-Renewable Resources.
... New Mexico's Land Grant and Severance Tax Permanent Funds were constitutionally
created to allow the state to save and invest the revenues it derives from the
extraction of natural resources statewide. Those funds, responsibly invested,
meet the dual goals of growing New Mexico's wealth and serving current and future
generations of New Mexicans by funding public education. This type of system has
been instituted in other states, provinces, and countries in the western United
States, Canada, and abroad. Permanent funds elsewhere have achieved varying degrees
of success. This article explores New Mexico's Land Grant and
Severance Tax
Permanent Funds, evaluates such funds in other states, and presents lessons to
be learned from those funds. Finally, this article proposes changes to New Mexico's
funds based on these lessons, which would allow New Mexico to continue to meet
and
exceed the dual goals of the Land Grant and Severance Tax Permanent Funds.
Complete
areticle in the Summer 2008 Natural Resources Journal
January
17, 2017 -
Severance
compensation - This is not royalties that go to the State to compensate for using
the States oil and gas resources.
Who
does it go to?
How
is it going to help the people who no longer have water?
Why
is okay to takes one’s livelihood away so others can benefit at their expense?
Is
the collapse of a community justifiable so that others can profit from a taking
of a water resource?
Why
would the State Engineer consider this course of action a way forward in granting
this application?
Water
is not equivalent to oil and gas as it is already is being put to a beneficial
use and has senior rights
to its use over the junior rights of the LLC.
(See January 18, 2017 above,
What is Water Worth?)
Download
the above
January
17, 2017-
SENATE
BILL 86 ... 2017 -
AN ACT Relating to water Rights Notifications, Requiring
the Office of the State engineer to Post Notices On-line. Download
SB86 Bill
NM
Legislature Link
January
17, 2017 -
NM Legislation
2017 -
HOUSE MEMORIAL 1 - A
MEMORIAL
Requesting the Interstate Stream Commission to Convene a Task Force
to Make recommendations to Correct Deficiencies in State and Regional Water Planning
Programs and Processes. Full
Bill Here
NM
Legislation original weblink.
Related:
August 15, 2015 - Analysis: Weaknesses mar NM’s capital outlay system. Click
here
January
13, 2017 -
NM State Engineer: “You know, do we need to be looking at
something like a severance tax on that water?”
Is
an elaborate proposal to pump thousands of acre feet of water 150 miles to Albuquerque
.... from the Augustin Plains Ranch (APR) in Catron and Socorro counties about
to trigger a new policy for large scale water sales in New Mexico, treating water
like oil and gas – including severance compensation as a political sweetener
for such a deal? The
Candle Publishing
January
10, 2017 -
No Right
to Free Water, Except for Nestlé. ... former Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck is
famous for denying that access to drinking water is a human right. But based on
the company’s actions, its management seems to believe that Nestlé
Corporation has a human right to free water. CounterPunch
January
9, 2017 - Whose water is it?
When
you apply for a water right or a permit for a well from the State of New Mexico,
it is assumed that there is water available for diversion. If there are no other
wells or surface diversions in your vicinity then there will not be a likelihood
of a protest. However, if there are other diversions close to your proposed diversion,
those diversions would have prior existing rights over your application.
You
would have to state how you are going to put this water to a beneficial use. The
State Engineer would then evaluate your application to see if it meets the required
standards for a permit to drill.
If
you knew that the existing wells in your area were shallow and you wanted to put
in a deeper well to ensure that you got all the water that was granted under your
application, the neighboring well owners could challenge your application stating
that you would be impairing their water right of prior appropriation and the fact
that you could be over drafting the common aquifer and cause their well or wells
to go dry. The State Engineer could respond, ‘that their wells are not going
to be impaired and that those wells could always be drilled deeper’. This
concept is a result of the Tom Morrison paper “Guidelines for the Assessment
of Drawdown Estimates” Feb. 2006. Of course this could be a remedy; if it
did not create a financial burden on the owners of the prior existing water rights.
What if the existing wells were only about 200 feet deep and your well is 2,000
feet deep? Would a 1,500 foot difference in depths be considered impairment?
This is a major difference and could cost the original water right holders many
hundreds of thousands of dollars to just compete with your well. Isn’t this
also considered a type of impairment “financial in nature”?
The
problem is that water generally flows down gradient, so that the water you are
pumping that lies under your property; when pumped long enough and at much lower
depth will cause the adjacent landowners water to flow toward your well over time.
This gradient flow is the result of the cone of depression created at your well
point. The bottom line is that you are mining your neighbor’s water. If
this occurred in the oil patch , a law suit would follow claiming a taking and
you would have to pay for the oil you should not have pumped along with damages.
It is too bad that this does not apply to water, a taking is a taking. So the
question arises as to whose water is it?
In
New Mexico the water belongs to the state and you have permission under the permit
system to only pump what you have been allocated under that permit. If you do
not use the water that has been allocated the state can reduce your allocation
to reflect what you are actually using. This practice is very common when a watershed
or an area under goes adjudication. Adjudication is where all the water users
in an area undergoing adjudication have their water use history researched and
if the people cannot verify their water use they may wind up having their amount
of water use reduced. This may seem harsh but once the water has been adjudicated
the amount of water granted is yours in perpetuity.
So
if the water in the state is the state’s water do whatever they wish with
it; except where there are water compacts with other state’s that they otherwise
obligated to comply with. Can the state just give it away to the highest bidder
or to people that know how to play the political game of saying that the water
is to be used for the greater good of the state’s residents. This is the
case where there are winners and there are losers. In most cases the losers are
residents in the rural areas of the state. This is the case where a major development
in the Albuquerque area (Santolina Project) that is proposed but not yet approved,
is trying to get water from the San Augustin Plains at the expense of the residents
that live there.
Well
again I come back to whose water is it? If you remember that, “water is life,
if you control the one you control the other.” So water is a political pawn
that is played with by the rich and influential to their financial gain and the
end user is non-consequential.
Dennis Inman - Geologist -
Download the comment
REF:
- Guidelines
for the Assessment of Drawdown
Estimates
- Basic
Groundwater Hydrology and Evaluation Porcedures - Training Manual
January
6, 2017 -
Business group lists priorities for legislative session...
Of particular interest is privatization of wate, and the support ... creation
of public-private partnerships to develop water infrastructure that will provide
public benefits, such as economical infrastructure project delivery and water
conservation. NM
Politics
Beyond
the Mirage The Future of Water in the West -
Video on YouTube
January
5, 2017 -
The Great Public Land Heist Has Begun
