Taos Commissioners Protest TOW Transfer!

(Editor’s Note: Here’s to Rick Smith at Brodsky Bookshop, John Nichols, and all the folks who showed up Friday, April 17 for a book signing and reading of Gringo Lessons. Yours truly was much moved by the SRO crowd and sales of some forty books, some to strangers. Thank you very much. You can still buy the book at Brodsky or from me as well as from the Historic Museums and from SOMOS. Watch this space for announcements about readings and retail opportunities.)

Kudos to J.R. Logan for his fine stories on water issues, TOW controversies, and the Abeyta-Taos Pueblo Water Settlement during the last two editions of The Taos News. Clip’em and keep’em for the historical record. I spoke with the reporter himself yesterday and he’s passionate about the subject.

More importantly, yesterday, April 21, the Taos County Commissioners voted unanimously to adopt the recommendation of the Taos Regional Water Board Citizen’s Advisory group to “protest” the transfer of some 1752 acre feet of water from Top of the World to the Pojoaque Basin i.e. to satisfy the terms of the Aamodt Settlement. Despite the odds of going up against millions of dollars and the political powerhouses, the feds, the State of New Mexico, Santa Fe County, and four pueblos, Nambe, Pojoaque, Tesuque, and San Ildefonso, the commissioners threw down the legal gauntlet.

During testimony by the BIA representative, and two sharpies from Santa Fe County, it was made clear in public discussion how the local signatories to the Abeyta agreement, the Town of Taos, EPWSD, the 12 MDWCAs, 54 members of TVAA, and especially Taos Pueblo overplayed their hand. Briefly, in an effort to grab San-Juan Chama Water rights, valuable water rights that could be sold or leased to downstream users below the Otowi gauge, the signatories, especially Taos Pueblo leaders, traded off Top of the World and other water rights, water rights perfected in Taos County for the pie in the sky of San Juan.

The “pie” comes from the Colorado River via the Colorado River Compact through the San Juan diversion project, tunnels, etc. from the San Juan River Basin to the Rio Grande River Basin via the Chama River at the Otowi junction on San Ildefonso and then down the Rio Grande to Santa Fe and Albuquerque. The water is stored at Heron Dam, Nambe Falls Dam, etc. The San Juan “pie” is more valuable because this “wet water” can be sold below the Otowi gauge.

Still, the Governor of California made headlines last week about the drought in that state, a state dependent on the Colorado River. According to reports water supplies in Heron Dam are down, way down, like Lake Mead near Las Vegas. So do we really believe New Mexico has the political clout to compete with California, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah when it comes to water rights, regardless of the “compact”?

Sustainability begins at home and in Taos County we need to keep an eye on our own watersheds, including Taos Valley and the Sangres and streams up north. Questa owes the Office of State Engineer a ton of “water rights” and needs help. Long ago some prominent Questenos sold their water rights to the Moly Mine. We don’t think of Chevron as a philanthropic organization.

You’ve got to also watch Taosenos because they have a disposition to sell out their neighbors, despite what they say in public about “respeto” for the elders and leaders and mayordomos. The patriarchy likes to patronize la gente while Peter helps himself to Paul’s pottage behind closed doors.

Indeed, as John Painter of EPWSD has recounted, the Town of Taos, under the Mayor Fred Peralta administration passed up an opportunity to buy TOW water rights prior to the Santa Fe water grab. By the time EPWSD made a bid for same, the sharpies from Santa Fe County had tied up the water rights. What came to light yesterday was how Taos Pueblo also ignored the opportunity to buy Top of the World water rights because they preferred the more valuable “pie” from the San Juan River Basin. Nelson and Gilbert want the cash for something…Taos Pueblo residents ought to ask: “What are you guys doing?”

As my old buddy Saki Karavas used to say, “What a tangled web we weave when we conspire to deceive.” Well the web, due as much to drought and movida makers, caught with their pants down up on the Acequia Madre del Rio Lucero, is coming apart as the light shines on the back-door doings. Now a younger and newer generation, the parciantes of El Salto, the Healys in Sunshine Valley at TOW, and finally, the Taos County Commissioners must get together and knit the acequia community et al back together. Yesterday Commissioner/Mayor Questa Mark Gallegos asked for other entities, including private parties to join Taos County in protesting the transfer of water rights to the Pojoaque Basin. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

(After all, the Lawrence Gallegos family, i.e. Mark’s, was leasing Top of the World from Santa Fe County for cattle grazing prior to the Healy purchase.)

I’d just like to remember Butchie (RIP) here because everything she, Ron Gardiner, and Kay Matthews said during the Regional Water Plan meetings has come true. The Abeyta people and their stooges protested because they were afraid Taosenos might find out how they were picking pockets. Nobody listened to the Canary in the Acequia. Everyone listened to the myth of Abeyta and did not see who was lowering the headgates, stealing the water like the parciante up in El Salto, who continues to help himself to the ditch though, reportedly, he has sold his water rights. The shadow knows.

So it goes. We’re having fun now. The Gringo keeps getting more lessons.