Environmental Project
Climate change, compact compliance pose challenges to irrigation districts on the Rio Grande
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Samantha Barncastle, general counsel of the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, told state lawmakers that a settlement in an interstate compact compliance case involving the Rio Grande will not lead to an end of litigation. “The farmers will push back somewhere,” she said during a Water and Natural Resources Committee meeting Tuesday in Las Cruces. The proposed settlement comes following years of litigation between Texas and New Mexico in which Texas argued New Mexico is taking more than its fair share of Rio Grande water, including through depleting river levels by groundwater pumping. Hannah Riseley-White, the director of the Interstate Stream Commission, described the proposed agreement as being “almost like a new compact.”
“So we need to figure out how to meet the obligations under this new compact while continuing to meet our existing obligations under the Rio Grande compact, as we’ve been working to do for the last many decades,” she said. She said more staff will be needed to do so.