Taos County Public Welfare Committee REJECTS TVAA TRANSFER PLAN

(Originally posted on Aug. 19, 2013)

Water Frackers Come to Arroyo Seco

Abeyta & Aamodt Signatories Drying Up Questa

In a scheme worthy of the Honorable Rube Goldberg or Judge Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court, Taos Valley Acequia Association (TVAA), under the guidance of water guru Palemon Martinez, has proposed purchasing some 183 acre feet of paper water from the Llano Community Ditch in Questa, allegedly owned by Lawrence Ortega, representative of the Bernabe Ortega estate.

Like the U.S. Supreme Court, which turns legal documents (corporations) into persons (Citizens United), TVAA wants to buy paper water rights and turn them “wet” by using the rights to pump water out the Rio Lucero, near Arroyo Seco, during winter, transport the water in pipes, then inject the water back into an “Aquifer and Storage Recovery” system. Come springtime on the acequia, TVAA proposes to pump the water from a deep well of some 1000 feet up and out back into the ditch.

Add the proposed loss of 183 acre feet from the Llano Ditch; throw in approximately 300 acre feet, purchased by El Prado Water and Sanitation District from the Gallagher Ranch in Sunshine, a Questa environ, plus 1700 acre feet purchased by Santa Fe from the Top of the World Farms to satisfy the Aamodt Settlement affecting Pojoaque and you can see why the alter ego of Milagro Beanfield War’s Joe Mondragon i.e. Jodie Cisneros of Questa showed up at the Taos Regional Water Committee’s SRO meeting on Monday, August 17, 2013. It’s a bean field war all over again.

Currently, the village of Questa leases approximately 2000 acre feet of water from Top of the World to maintain its system because the Office of the State Engineer claims the village is running a deficit of some 2000 acre feet. The seller on the Llano Ditch, Lawrence Ortega, also sits on the Village of Questa council.

Here’s a kicker: Jeannie Masters of Questa presented the Public Welfare Committee with a letter, signed by five Ortega relatives in Questa, who claim “a share in ownership of these water rights” since the heirs of Bernabe Ortega, who had two brothers, “have never probated his estate” so “we have been unable to enter our cause and proof of shared ownership.”

The inimitable Kay Matthews, a ditch commissioner from El Valle and publisher-editor of La Jicarita news, chaired the public welfare committee meeting. Committee members present included Glorianna Dominguez Atencio, an acequia commissioner from Arroyo Hondo; Milton Cisneros, a commissioner from Cerro; Ron Gardiner from Questa; Joe Torres from El Salto; Norman Quenzler from Taos; and Tanya Leherissey, a mayordoma from Llano San Juan.

Attendees at the meeting included Palemon Martinez and his attorney, Rebecca Dempsey, Alfred Trujillo from Arroyo Hondo, one of the original founders of TVAA, an expert in acequia and land grant matters, Tony Trujillo of Lama, Peggy Nelson from San Cristobal, Tony Benson from the West Mesa, David Rael from the Spring Ditch and a member of TVAA, and a few folks whose names I didn’t catch.

Although the committee will make a final report to the Taos County Commission, they voted 6 to 1, to reject the transfer due to negative affects on the Questa community. Among the criteria, the committee found that the transfer would impact the cultural character, agrarian character, economic vitality, ecological health, water supply, conservation, and conjunctive management of the Questa ditch.

Conjunctive management refers to the way surface and groundwater interact, affecting shallow and deep aquifers along with surface riparian areas adjacent to acequias. For instance, ground water pumping can lower water tables and impair shallow wells downstream. Meanwhile, the proposed transfer from two watershed valleys north of Arroyo Seco affects northern Taos County residents.

Committee member Joe Torre, a rancher from Arroyo Seco, voted for the transfer, noting that the Ortega water rights hadn’t been used in more than forty years. He said he regretted the situation and blamed the state but the law dictated his action—though he admitted he wouldn’t vote to allow water rights to be sold out from under Arroyo Seco residents or parciantes on the Rio Lucero, which will gain much from the proposed transfer.

In other words the negative impacts on the Questa Ditch will have either positive or unknown effects on the Arroyo Seco ditch and watershed areas. Though TVAA proposes to inject water into the ground, and then pump water in the spring from deep wells, a hydrological conundrum exists due to the geological complexity of the Taos Valley underground.

Next, the committee will forward its recommendation to protest the transfer to the County Commissioners, who will decide whether or not to follow the committee’s direction. A couple of months ago, the commissioners voted to ignore the committee and not protest the El Prado Water and Sanitation transfer from the Gallagher Ranch. All transfers are submitted to the state engineer’s office.

TVAA has frequently argued in public that the settlement with Taos Pueblo, El Prado, the Town of Taos, and 12 Mutual Domestics reflects “custom and tradition.” But as critic Alfred Trujillo pointed out, there is nothing customary or traditional about drilling deep-water wells to store water in underground aquifers only to pump it up later. Ron Gardiner said that the situation in Taos Valley is a “zero sum” game where no new water is being created while paper water rights are being moved around, which could result in taking 2500 acres of Ag land out of commission permanently. Spring Ditch mayordomo David Rael, a member of TVAA, said TVAA refused to support his ditch’s lawsuit against the Town of Taos, which had blocked and otherwise depleted the springs, a source of the ditch’s water due to road construction and pumping from Well no. 5 by the Town of Taos, also an Abeyta signatory.

As has often been said, “Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.” Nobody was drinking on Monday at the meeting but the tension was so thick you could cut it with a dull shovel blade.

Palemon Martinez gave a brief history of court cases as background to the Abeyta lawsuit and settlement but Alfred Trujillo narrated a different history, reciting court cases and land grant histories, chapter and verse and noted that Arroyo Seco had “junior water rights” in comparison to Arroyo Hondo and other neighborhood acequias. Alfred called the “Antonio Martinez” land grant a “fake grant.”

Peggy Nelson noted that water should stay in the watershed.

Tony Trujillo reminded the committee that the “Rio Grande doesn’t flow uphill” and asked, “How does it help for one water district to jump on another? How does it cure the situation?”

Jodie Cisneros mentioned that “the mine is using 790,000 gallons of water a day. There’s not enough to go around.”

Contrary to TVAA’s notion about promoting “custom and tradition,” Spanish  and American law respects “priority” or senior water rights, according to Alfred Trujillo. He noted that the Abeyta–Taos Pueblo lawsuit settlement has yet to be approved by a federal court judge–though Congress and the President have signed off on the deal. Certainly, the Spring Ditch parciantes haven’t signed off and the protests are coming. One can only wonder why Questenos sleep as their water disappears in a cloud of dollar bills.