During the one-month session from January 18 to February 17, most bills that will be considered are appropriation bills. Funding will also be allocated for agency budgets. The budgets suggested by the executive and Legislative Finance Committee don’t come close to initiating the critical efforts needed to develop active management of water diversion, robust regional planning in priority water basins, or groundwater investigations according to the New Mexican Mid Rio Grande Water Advocates. The legislature may act to enhance some of this necessary funding. There are two water bills which especially need your attention. Contact your legislators to support these two bills.
HB 24 – “State Engineer Water Planning and Management” would help with some of the critical funding shortages in this office.
HB 131- “Water Data Act Implementation” would help with costs of collecting data where there are gaps in our knowledge of water availability, especially in aquifers.
Other water bills to support are:
HB 121 –“Acequia and Community Ditch Fund” would help small-farmer managed associations defend against large developers in expensive court suits among other things.
SB 162 – “Strategic Water Reserve” and SB 18 – “Water Trust Fund” would re-appropriate funds to these ongoing projects.
SB 17 – “Authorization for Certain Water Projects” would allocate funds to municipal and rural water projects that have been vetted by a state-wide committee.
The Legislature has an easy-to-use website http://nmlegis.gov. You can look up your legislators, find what bills they are sponsoring, see PDFs with the actual content of the bills, read analyses of bills, and find which committees they are currently being heard in.
ACTION: Both House Appropriations and Finance (Chair: Patricia Lundstrom) and Senate Finance (Chair: George Munoz) need to include funding for all the water bills in their final budgets. Send them an e-mail. These bills are a start but much more is needed if we are to plan a water future in these changing times.
Searchlight New Mexico has a recent series of investigative reports on our state’s water problems. Take a look at https://searchlightnm.org/water-reform-uphill-battle-in-new-mexico/
