SIGN THE PETITION FOR OUR RIVER'S RIGHT TO FLOW! Make this "the Year of Our River"!

This is the year to revive our river!  Our reservoirs are full and the public is behind it. Now let's encourage our City Council to endorse it!  Sign the Petition for our River's Right to Flow!  Ask our City government to let our river keep some of its water and keep flowing! 

There has never been a more opportune time to being our river back to life.  One year after being declared the Most Endangered River in America, we can turn the picture around.  Click here to download the Petition to Santa Fe Mayor David Coss and City Councilors, asking them to endorse our river's right to flow, and to commit 10% of our total water to the river.  There is some fine print, but only a little.  Here is the text from the petition:

The Santa Fe River needs water!  As a resident of the Santa Fe Watershed who depends on the water of the river, I recognize that the river itself also has a right to survive.  As a citizen of the City of Santa Fe, I am a part-owner of the river water which the City manages.  I want our river to have some of that water.  I urge the Mayor and City Councilors to recognize our river's right to flow, and to commit 1,000 acre feet of water (10% of our total water use) to get our river flowing this year.  During droughts, the amount of water would, of course, be reduced, but the principle of sharing some water with the river should remain.  It is time to bring our river back to life. Let our river flow!

How to send the petition to your City Councilors:

You can print out the petition and mail it or email it, to your Councillors.  Remember, if you live in the City, you have two City Councilors representing your district.   Here is the contact information: 

District 1 (Councilors Patti Bushee and Chris Calvert); District 2 (Councilors Rosemary Romero and Rebecca Wurzburger); District 3 (Councilors Miguel Chavez and Carmichael Dominguez), and District 4 (Councilors Matthew Ortiz and Ronald Trujillo).  The mailing address is 200 Lincoln Ave; P.O. Box 909, Santa Fe, NM  87504.  For email addresses, or to find a map of the districts, go to the City Council Website 

FAQ's About Restoring Flow to Our River

Where Will the Water Come From?   Water for the river will come from the river itself.  Right now that river is impounded in our reservoirs so we can use it in our homes, businesses, and for landscaping.  If we could get by with less water for ourselves, we could keep some in the river.  There are two major ways we could get by with less water:

1. Conservation.  Let's agree to voluntarily reduce total water use by just 5%.  We have already made good progress in water conservation, but there is much more we can do.  Each of us can decide how to meet the 5% target, and there are several city-wide programs to help:  We can install low-flow shower heads, water-saving appliances like front-loading washers, drip irrigation instead of sprinklers for the garden, etc.  A 5% decrease in water used translates to 500 acre feet of water saved.
2. Rainwater Harvesting for landscape irrigation.  When the drip irrigation lines are hooked up to water tanks storing rainwater from the roof, we are on our way to a sustainable future.  With the combination of roof catchment and drip irrigation, we could cut our summer landscape irrigation demand in half (according to City Water Division estimates).  Even if we assume only a 50% success in the program to reduce landscape irrigation by half, the water saved is impressive.  In normal years, the amount of water used in urban irrigation is between 2,000 and 3,000 acre feet, far more than the amount of water we would need to revive the river.  If we assume just half the efficiency savings that we think are actually possible from landscape irrigation, we can free up between 500 and 750 acre feet from this source alone. 

Where Will the Water Go?   The water that escapes from the reservoirs and flows down the river is not "wasted".  In addition to providing our community with what Mayor Coss calls "our most important park", the water that infiltrates into the ground replenishes our dangerously stressed aquifers.  Other cities, including Albuquerque, are deliberately diverting water into arroyos as a way of recharging the aquifers, since it is those aquifers that serve as our insurance policy in the event of drought, should the surface flows dry up.  In Santa Fe, we are blessed with a river that is trying to replenish our aquifer if only we would allow it to do its job!   By keeping the river water artificially impounded far upstream, we are literally undermining our only safety net for surviving the next big drought. 

How Much Water Does the River Need?   The 1,000 acre feet of water that Mayor Coss is proposing to allocated to the river this year is a good starting point.  In wet years, when the rains are favorable, we should release more water into the river, allowing our aquifers to store the excess.  And in dry years when the reservoirs are down, we would release less water, though even in dry times, the river will need water.  Releasing water for the river when our reservoirs are low is in our own best interest to keep our aquifers healthy so we can pump the water out again.  The aquifers are our drought contingency; we save money for a rainy day; we save water in our aquifers to protect us when the rains fail.  Only in the most dire of droughts would we consider doing what we already do today: sacrifice the river to save ourselves.  That day might come, but it should be our community's last desperate act, and not our first greedy impulse.  If and when we do get to that point, we would turn off the river knowing that there is still water in the aquifer that we can use during the drought emergency.  Then when the emergency is over, and our reservoirs start to fill, we would restore the flow to the river, and thereby recharge the depleted aquifers as well.

What Else Can We Do?   We have acquired a huge burden of "river debt" by impounding our river, over-pumping our groundwater, straightening the river channel, and encouraging it to dig deeper and deeper into the earth.  We need to restore the physical structure of our river, and many projects are now underway or planned to do just that.  But we also need to find more ways to put more water into the river as well as into the aquifer.  Managing stormwater is one priority.  Through clever engineering and vegetation, water from rainstorms can be slowed and held, allowing that water to infiltrate into the aquifer, or indirectly into the river channel through the soil.  Another priority is to find ways of injecting our wastewater into the aquifer, as well as into the river itself.   Both stormwater and wastewater management require big investments and multi-year projects, and we need to start making those investments now.

What Are the Benefits?  A living river gives us a recreational, educational, and spiritual experience that nothing else can replace.  It provides scarce habitat for birds, animals, insects, and fish, and that same habitat provides our children with a cool oasis in the summer and a playground all year.  And at the same time, a flowing river invests a steady stream of water into our aquifer so we will have an underground reservoir to draw upon during times of drought. 

What Are the Costs?  The engineering work to restore our river to its earlier physique will be expensive, but the initial act of releasing water into the river is entirely free, or to put it another way, the water is already paid for.  The citizens of Santa Fe City collectively own nearly all the water rights in the Santa Fe River.  There is no charge for using water which we already own.  We have the power to put "our" water into the Santa Fe River, if we choose to do so.

Will There Be Enough Water for Development and Economic Growth?   New development in the City already is required to provide new sources of water.  New water can be obtained through purchase of existing water rights within the city or in adjacent county lands.  Expansions of existing developments can obtain permits by showing conservation in the established development to offset the new development.  Affordable housing projects could be supported by a water tax on existing users, by new city wells (if that became a priority for the city), by purchasing existing private groundwater rights within the city (there are more than 1000 private wells within the city limits), or through further conservation programs.  Affordable housing does not have to be at the expense of the river, and vice versa.  Ultimately, investor confidence in Santa Fe will benefit from the community's commitment to safeguard its long-term water security through a healthy river and aquifer system.

What Are We Waiting For?  We are building a consensus within our community that a flowing Santa Fe River is both possible and desirable.  We need to overcome the lurking fear that we cannot afford to have water running down our river.  We need to understand that over the long term, our community cannot afford a river that does not have water running in it, keeping the river corridor, and the aquifer below, watered and alive. 

Are People Really Behind this Idea?.   The biggest obstacle to constructive discussion about reviving the river is fear.  People who do not know the "math" of our water supply, and who do not understand the connectivity between surface water and groundwater, are fearful that there might not be enough water to go around.  Educating the public about our water system is perhaps the first step to alleviating the fear, but a close second step has to be the positive vision of what a living river can mean for the community.  A living river is not a "cost" any more than our children are "costs" to our families.  A living river is a vital part of our community and of our life experience.  We have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to provide the experience of a living river to ourselves and future generations.

Archives on the Living River:

Last year our river was declared the nation's most endangered. You can listen to the April 17, 2007 report from National Public Radio (NPR) story featuring SFWA's founder, Paige Grant,