Water master supervisor Vince Chavez stands peering into a below-ground well house off County Road 84 in the Pojoaque Valley. The Pojoaque River, a tributary of the Rio Grande, is a football field away. Inside the dark well house, the valley's water master, Jeff Pompeo, shines a flashlight around the walls, brushing away spider webs and looking for black widows. Then he takes a metal tape measure, dabs chalk on the end and lowers it into the well casing until it touches water.

"We found 50 black widows in one well house in Nambé," said co-worker Stephan C. Apodaca, a geographic information systems analyst, who's busy jotting down geographic coordinates and waiting for Pompeo to call out water depths.

Black widows are about the worst hazard Chavez's team faces right now as they establish 60 monitoring wells in the valley. A few residents were suspicious over their motives for monitoring at first, but only one so far has threatened to booby trap wells.

Now, as Congress considers signing a long-awaited, sometimes bitterly-battled settlement over pueblo water rights in the valley, Chavez sees the water master duties increasing in the future. "I anticipate that our role will get much bigger. We will be monitoring all the surface and groundwater use in the Pojoaque and Tesuque valleys," says Chavez, who was hired by the Office of the State Engineer right after finishing his degree in geological engineering at New Mexico State University two dozen years ago.

The settlement could test the relationships the water masters have worked to build in the valley.

Water masters oversee groundwater and surface water allocations around the state, depending on the region. They are the state engineer's referees and ambassadors in the field. "We are the most visible to the public," Chavez says.

Usually water masters are hired by the state engineer. Currently, there are 25 around the state. Some make sure people aren't pumping more than they should out of irrigation wells. Some ensure water reaches the headgates of individual acequias off the mother ditch or stream.

Chavez does double duty. He was picked by the state engineer to oversee the five other water masters in District 6, which encompasses Santa Fe, Chama, Las Vegas and the Pojoaque Valley. A federal court also appointed him to supervise well monitoring and surface water deliveries under the pueblo water rights settlement known as Aamodt that involves Tesuque, Nambé, San Ildefonso and Pojoaque pueblos and nonpueblo residents in the valley.

Right now, the water masters in the valley focus on making sure 315 domestic wells in the area that have restricted water use under the settlement are complying. The well owners have to submit quarterly reports showing use; if they don't, the water masters collect the data. Most of the well owners are using far less than the 228,000 gallons of water a year (seven-tenths of an acre-foot) they are allowed, Chavez says.

Another 3,000 wells in the valley don't have that limit. But settlement negotiators have urged the owners to hook into a proposed, and controversial, regional water system and cap their wells. Chavez says he's no hydrologist, but he thinks the wells probably impact the Rio Grande's tributaries like Nambé and Pojoaque, especially in dry years.

Pompeo and Apodaca are setting up the last of 60 monitoring wells scattered around the valley. Those wells will provide baseline water levels and help the state engineer, the pueblos and other residents track water levels. Part of the Aamodt settlement requires compensation to well owners if their water levels are impaired by the pueblos pumping new wells.

If Congress approves the settlement, the Pojoaque Valley water masters will add surface water administration to their duties. Right now, Chavez says, "we're preparing for it, getting measurement stations installed at the surface diversions."

Chavez drives the winding road that follows the Rio Nambé below Nambé Dam past abandoned fields and newly plowed ones. The river runs into the Rio Grande about 10 miles west of the dam.

He stops to look at a new measuring station in the main irrigation ditch off the Rio Nambé. The ditch delivers water to more than 20 acequias and hundreds of acres of irrigated land, all part of the Pojoaque Valley Irrigation District.

The measuring station sends an electronic reading of the ditch flow every 15 minutes to the water master's office. Eventually those readings will be posted on the Office of the State Engineer's Web site so anyone can see them.

Chavez said 28 such stations have been installed so far in Nambé, Tesuque and the Pojoaque Valley. A few more are planned in Cuyamungue. Each station costs about $20,000.

The irrigation district pays its own ditch rider, a kind of local water master, to help allocate water among individual acequias. Eventually, it will be the state water master's job to ensure each acequia is only receiving the share it's been granted by the federal court under the Aamodt settlement. "How it gets distributed is the ditch rider's deal," Chavez says.

Water masters clean the main ditch from the measuring stations to the diversion points. The acequia members — hundreds of them in the valley — are responsible for keeping their own ditches clean.

Alfredo Roybal has been the Pojoaque Valley Irrigation District ditch rider and the Nambé Dam manager for almost five years. He thinks the measuring stations will make managing the water "a lot easier. In the past, we had different kinds of gauges and plumes. There was a lot of inconsistency. Some worked. Some didn't."

Roybal says he sees his relationship to the state water masters as a partnership. "We're getting to the point that with water shortages and population increases, and the demands on agriculture water, (water use) will have to be watched closely," he said.

As the guy who right now has to deal with angry farmers when they can't get water because the Nambé reservoir runs low, he understands what the water masters will be up against. While the water masters will one day have to administer a court-ordered division of water, he has to deal with what nature delivers.

"Water is something people are always going to be fighting about it, especially in the dry Southwest," Roybal said. "It's a good spring right now. Everyone is getting water. When there isn't much, we have to rotate water delivery based on the seniority of water rights."

"Sometimes we have to shut down water deliveries," Roybal said. "If there's no water, it doesn't matter if people scream or pray. There's no more water. People don't understand that."

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.

Editor's note: Rio Grande Voices is an occasional series about people whose lives or careers are tied to the river.