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Thursday, January 13, 2005

Valley Residents Unite

By John T. Huddy and Kathy Louise Schuit
Telegraph Staff Writers
    As Estancia Valley residents geared up to fight the proposed transfer of billions of gallons of local water to Santa Fe, a Santa Fe City Council subcommittee gave its approval to the controversial plan.
    On Monday, the city's Public Works Committee sent a proposed "option" contract on the water to the full council for debate. A public hearing was scheduled during a meeting that started at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
    The contract would allow city officials to shell out $6 million— $2 million a year over each of the next three years— for first rights to buy 7,200 acre-feet of water owned by Sierra Waterworks LLC, a group of Estancia Basin farmers who own more than 8,000 acres of farmland between Moriarty and Estancia.
    If the city eventually signs a contract to buy all 7,200 acre-feet, it would get a 51 percent stake in the farms and be able to pump more than 5 million gallons a day into the city— sucking more than 2 billion gallons annually from the Estancia Basin aquifer.
    That prospect has led some Estancia Valley residents to start organizing formally to fight the proposal— both in court and in the Legislature.
    A group called the Estancia Basin Resource Association issued a news release Monday announcing its formation and the intention to "fund legal aid to fight the current exportation proposal."
    The association also "will propose and pursue legislation at state and local levels to protect the Estancia Water Basin from future attack," the release said.
    Peggy Schwebach, a spokeswoman for the group, said an eight-member board was selected from about 45 people.
    Moriarty Mayor Adan Encinias, Estancia Mayor Martin Hibbs and Bruce Peterson, superintendent of the Estancia school district, are all on the group's board of directors, Schwebach said.
    The group will raise money from private interests, including out of their own pockets, she added. Representatives planned to attend Wednesday's Santa Fe City Council meeting to speak against the deal.
    An initial membership meeting to approve bylaws and solicit active membership will be held Friday at 6:30 p.m. at the Torrance County Fairgrounds Building in Estancia. Charles Dumar, professor emeritus at the UNM School of Law, will be a featured speaker.
   
$27 million rights
    Santa Fe leaders have proposed spending $27 million to purchase the 7,200 acre-feet of water rights, and pump the water into Santa Fe through a 65-mile pipeline costing upward of $100 million for infrastructure and treatment supplies.
    The city has not yet applied for a state permit to transfer the water rights from Sierra Waterworks to the city of Santa Fe.
    Galen Buller, the city's water director, told the committee the success of the water deal hinges on getting state engineer approval to pump the water out of the Estancia Basin. Past attempts to export water from the basin have failed.
    "We just don't know what the final ... decision is going to be," he said.
    Questions have arisen about Sierra Waterworks' water rights: whether they are transferable, whether they are sustainable, and whether opposition to the deal in the basin is strong enough to stop it. City officials agreed Monday that all these issues need more research.
    Councilor Patti Bushee encouraged patience.
    "I know people have a lot of questions," she said. "But this is the start to a very long process."
    At a special meeting of the Estancia Basin Water Planning Committee in Estancia last week, more than 200 residents, farmers and Torrance County officials showed up to express their opposition to the plan.
    State Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort said at the meeting that she will fight for legislation to keep Estancia Basin water from being exported.
    Wilson Beffort, a Republican whose district includes parts of the Estancia Basin, serves on the Legislature's Water and Natural Resources interim committee.
    She said Santa Fe has had many chances to improve its own watershed and has failed to do so.
    In each of her eight years on the water committee, Wilson Beffort said, Santa Fe has been urged to institute a program of forest thinning to ensure that more snowmelt water can make its way to the city's wells and reservoirs.
    "Their watershed has been deprived of the water that nature had provided it by resisting this technique," she said. "The city could have been reaping that water harvest all along."
   
Residents speak out
    The Jan. 6 special meeting was filled with people opposed to the proposal.
    "Everybody in the valley and (East) mountains will suffer if we don't stop this," said one area resident.
    "We will eventually develop the valley and become something other than a poor county," said another. "But water is very important to that."
    "Are the people of Santa Fe going to be our silvery minnow?" asked Lisa Powers, to loud applause.
    No one spoke in favor of the proposal, and no representatives of Sierra Waterworks attended the meeting.
    Questions about the validity of the water rights being used to put the deal together were among those left unanswered.
    Most of those questions centered on whether the water rights in the deal are "paper" rights— rights giving the holder the permission to use the water, but that have never been used or have been used and then allowed to lapse— or "wet" rights— those actually backed up with current water use.
    "If I was going to offer water to somebody outside the basin, I'd sure make sure it's wet," said Jim Corbin, committee executive director. "If it's not wet water they're (Sierra Waterworks) thinking about, shame on them."
    John Cyle Sharp, president of Sierra Waterworks, has maintained that the water deal should be seen as a conservation effort and an opportunity for economic development for the Estancia Valley.
    Sharp said he already takes about 14,500 acre-feet of ground water for agricultural use under his water rights. But if the water is instead used "consumptively," such as for a municipal water supply, only about 7,200 acre-feet would be pumped, he said.
    "From a conservation standpoint, that is huge," he said last week.
    But Corbin has argued that pumping only half as much would still deplete the aquifer at about the same rate, since the extra volume is presumed to return to ground water when used for agriculture. He also has said that the State Engineer will have to review how much of Sharp's water rights have actually been maintained through beneficial use.
    Conflict denied
    Santa Fe water official used to represent Estancia Basin seller A6
    Letters drafted
    Pumping proposal opposed by area governments A6