Now that it is lower again (judging by your photos, as I haven’t crossed yet today,) I suddenly remember the MRGCD irrigation season began on March 1st. So earlier, higher rio flows were probably water released upstream for irrigation, I’m guessing. And the lower flow now, due to that water being redirected into the acequias.

At least these days we have the minimum flow in an attempt to protect the silvery minnow. When was growing up here, it was quite normal to have no water at all in the Rio Grande through Albuquerque in summer as all of it was redirected – the water from the drainage ditches would just soak into the sand.

Love your recent coyote piece too BTW.

I should have clarified that that’s for ag-to-municipal water rights transfers. (And I received that pricing from a water broker in the area, who told me: “Water in the MRG sells for about $15,000 per acre foot of consumptive use. This price includes transactional costs.”)

Please do keep in touch. The issues are so complex–mind-numbingly so–that I’m always super happy to learn more and think more deeply about all of this. You may reach me via email at laura.paskus@gmail.com.

These numbers are interesting and they bring in to the picture ea number of other related numbers that it would be good, for those of us who are interested, to share and double-check. One is the amount of water that the cities consider to be “unaccounted for water (UAW)” and this is a fairly big number (in the 10% range, of the total water used). Albuquerque uses about 60,000 AF per year and that could amount to about 6,000 (K) AF.

Another important point is that the larger cities use very little water, indoors. Almost all of the consumptive-use is outdoors—because we have a closed distribution system and almost all of the inside or indoors water is returned to the utilities and either cleaned and reused or returned to the river. If you take a shower (as a utility customer), for example, your consumptive-use is probably less than a pint. Everything else (99+%) is returned to the system, Almost everything we use, in these cities, is associated with lawns, parks, playing fields, farms, etc. We probably don’t use a gallon of water per person per day,indoors — and there are an awful lot of folks who do not have lawns. The folks who are not connected to utility systems and use wells and the folks who have lawns are, of course, another story.

There are a number of us who are trying to follow these things closely and understand such things as this and we will be happy to keep in touch with you and share whatever we can. There are major issues to discuss in all of the areas of interest (quality, supply, conservation, etc.) and we will try to keep you informed and to have a confidential running dialogue with you.

If possible, please send me a copy of this note, in a reply, because your system does not do that automatically. Thanks.

Cheers

An attention-grabbing discussion is price comment. I believe that it’s best to write extra on this subject, it may not be a taboo topic but usually people are not enough to speak on such topics. To the next. Cheers…