By July 1st, ABQ Will Be Totally On Groundwater; Water District Upstream Storage Nearly Gone

[hatrack]

EDIT

Albuquerque, which draws some of its drinking water from the Rio Grande, began reducing its river diversion Tuesday evening. By July 1, the water utility plans to switch entirely to deep wells beneath the city to supply the metro area’s water, according to John Stomp, the utility’s chief operating officer. “We’ll be all groundwater,” Stomp said in an interview.

Most Rio Grande farmers from Cochiti to Elephant Butte Reservoir will see substantially reduced supplies as early as next week, said David Gensler, water system manager for the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.

The district expects to run out of water in its upstream storage reservoir by Sunday, according to Gensler. By early next week, as a result, flows are likely to begin dropping quickly in the Rio Grande. The remaining natural flow, along with some water stored by the federal government to meet Native American communities’ senior water rights, is all that will be available, Gensler said.

The irrigation ditches will not go completely dry. “We do think there will still be some water in the system at various places,” Gensler said. But farmers will see their irrigation water significantly curtailed, he said.

EDIT

http://www.abqjournal.com/main/214656/news/rio-level.html

[pscot]

1. Can you spell a-n-a-s-a-z-i?

There, I knew you could.

[phantom power]

2. One of these years, a major city is going to run out of water.

That will be interesting.

[Nihil]

3. Looks like ABQ is in the running to be #1 then ...

> By July 1, the water utility plans to switch entirely to deep wells beneath the city to supply the metro area’s water

> Total precipitation averaged across the state’s snowy high mountains and low arid deserts for the last 12 months,
> less than 8 inches, is the lowest since record-keeping began in the late 1800s.

> “There are a heck of a lot more people here now than there were a hundred years ago,”

Go drink deep from the fossil water ... and build the heap of fail even bigger with every year that you do so ...