Living River Initiative

The Santa Fe Watershed Association invites your support and participation in reviving the Santa Fe River from the dry ditch that we see today to a flowing, vibrant perennial stream that brings life to our community.

Our dream is a flowing, meandering, tree-lined stream where fish and frogs can swim, children can play, and all of us can enjoy. The beauty of this river will also have a practical side. SFWA bumper sticker The restored river and its tributary arroyos will retain more water during floods and keep more water in the aquifer where it can be recovered through wells. A healthy river system might deliver water all the way to the Rio Grande to replace some of the water which Santa Fe City pumps from the Rio Grande acquifer upstream in the Buckman well field.

A living river would enhance property values and serve as a highly desirable "waterscape" for cafes, hotels, and residential dwellings. A flowing river could help restore agriculture within the watershed, where fields of high-value fruits and vegetables could be grown for local markets. Most importantly, a living, flowing river would enrich the lives of the people who encounter it along its way, and remind us that we are all connected one to another, and remind us that we are very much connected to the natural world. With 85% of our body weight as water, and 40% of that water coming from the Santa Fe river, we are 1/3 Santa Fe River.

We are, in a very literal sense, children of the river. And like children, we have been very self-centered in our treatment of the river. It is time to show respect to the river that has shared its life with us, but helping it to recover its health, and continue to provide life both for us and for itself. 

TALKING POINTS ON RESTORING FLOW.  The proposition to give water to our river when our current policy is to take all the water out of the river, requires some explanation.  This 5-page briefing paper attempts to lay out the case for a living river as a priority for Santa Fe.  Download the Talking Points.

Learn more about environmental flow

Here are a few links to get you started:

Environmental Flows Network Newsletter, produced by the International Water Management Institute, IUCN, TNC, and other environmental and water organizations, connects the disparate people who are working on this topic.

"A Collaborative and Adoptive Process for Developing Environmental Flow Recommendations," a recent article by B. Richter et al published in River Research and Applications, and available for download (PDF file)

Desert's Rivers Can Be Revived, an op-ed piece by Melissa Lamberton in The Arizona Daily Star highlights the experience of South Africa and its relevance to Arizona (and by implication, to New Mexico as well).

FLOW - The Essentials of Environmental Flows, published in 2003 by the Water and Nature Initiative of IUCN - The World Conservation Union. This site provides the publication as a free download, along with other information and links regarding the economics of living rivers.

Finding Water for the River

Where can water be found for the Santa Fe River? The simplest solution is to keep some of the water in the river, allowing enough to flow through the dam to support a healthy ecosystem. The water that flows down the river channel, through the city, and on down into the county, then into Cochiti tribal lands toward the Rio Grande, helps replenish the aquifer as it infiltrates into the soil; it gives sustenance to the vegetation along the channel, and it supports bugs, fish, amphibians, and birds along the way. Some of this water is recovered by city and private wells. Some of the water makes its way into the Rio Grande aquifer. And in any case, some water is released simply for the purpose of managing the reservoir and preventing a sudden flood of water spilling over the dam.

As we saw last Spring, the river was flowing freely, or so it seemed, because the mountain snowpack was deep enough to guarantee that the reservoirs would fill. The river was turned "on" on March 15, and turned off in early June. If there had been a policy of routine environmental flow, the river would have been kept "on" at a very low rate all through the winter, slightly depleting the reservoirs, which would then have filled again with the Spring snowmelt. The additional water releases required for environmental flow can often get repaid through normal precipitation, so there is no cost to keeping the river alive. But there is always risk, and there is sometimes a cost, when the rains don't materialize and the reservoir gets lower and lower. This is called a drought, and we are quite used to them. When the reservoir levels drop too low, we switch to groundwater, which in normal years provides 60% of Santa Fe's water supply. In dry years, we rely much more on groundwater, and in dire times, we rely exclusively on groundwater.

Conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water is a strategy that Santa Fe is already quite good at, but up till now we have used that strategy without regard for the river's water health. We can use the same strategy for the broader purpose of maintaining the river as well as the city. And by keeping some water flowing in the river, we will be continuously recharging the acquifers, though until we do a better job of conserving and reusing our water, we are going to continue to pump more water out of the aquifer than gets recharged.

Water Conservation

The easiest and cheapest way to find more water for our river is through conservation. While it is true that Santa Fe water customers have been doing a better job each year with water conservation, there is much more that could be done. Around the country, cities are using less water per capita than they did just 5 years ago, thanks to increasing awareness about simple ways to conserve water, such as low-fluch toilets, improved shower heads, etc. But there a a few very plump low-hanging fruits that we can focus attention on to get a bigger impact on total water use:

1. Rooftop Water Harvesting to capture water before it becomes stormwater, and provide a valuable substitute for using City water for landscaping. Since landscape irrigation accounts for a big portion of peak summer demand -- which is also when the river is most in need of water for its environmental health -- capturing and storing roof-top water can be an important part of meeting the river's water needs.

2. Improved landscape water use. Santa Fe gardens use a lot more water than they need to, even to meet their often questionable objectives of looking like a garden somewhere other than in the arid Southwest! There are many small ways of saving water in the garden, which add up to significant savings. The Water Division's flyer on Water Savvy Gardening gives lots of ideas.

3. More efficient household appliances that use water. Of course your toilet is low-flow, but are you using a front-loading washer? Are you using the shortest cycle on your dishwasher? Does your shower heat up instantly [Mine doesn't...!]? Appliances you use every day can yield considerable water savings.

4. Water re-use. From dumping the pan of dish water on the plants, to configuring your septic tank to convert black water to grey water and connecting it all to a drip irrigation system, there is a world of creativity awaiting you in the challenge of re-using water. The more times water can be re-used within the home and garden, the less water you will need from the City water supply and the more water will be available for our thirsty river. You can find many ideas about water re-use, and other conservation tips, from the Sierra Club Blueprint for Santa Fe.

For an overview of the City's long-term plan for water conservation, see the City of Santa Fe Water Conservation and Drought Management Plan.

Water Rights for the Santa Fe River

The Santa Fe River doesn't suffer from a lack of water; it suffers from a lack of water rights. After all, landowners along Acequia Madre receive regular supplies of water even if the river itself is dry, because those landowners are also owners of senior water rights. The River, while arguably considerably more senior then any of us, never filed for rights to its own water! The solution? We can do the paperwork that the River neglected to do. We can purchase water rights that can be designated for environmental flow. The new rights need to be legally recognized as senior, which involves some legal maneuvering. An effort along these lines is underway with a newly formulated "check-off" program whereby Santa Fe utility customers can opt to pay an extra amount on their water bill towards the purchase of environmental water rights (for either the Santa Fe River or the Rio Grande). The city will match the private contributions on a 1:1 basis, and then arrange the water rights purchases. For more information about this program, including a registration form to sign-up for monthly contributions to the fund through your water bill, click here.

The concept of purchasing water rights to guarantee an environmental flow has been applied throughout the West in some form or other. These experiences are outlined in a recent report from Trout Unlimited, entitled, "Liquid Assets." Click here to download this report (PDF File, 1.3MB)