So is the never-ending case of Reynolds v. Aamodt et al., launched in 1966 as a "friendly" determinant of pueblo and non-pueblo water rights in the Pojoaque Valley, nearing its end? Or, as the fallout from a recent public-opinion poll on the issue might hint, is it still far from over?

Settlement agreements were signed three years ago — but they're only early-stage accords; even a "partial final decree" from federal district court isn't expected before the end of 2012. And disposition of the case hinges on a regional water system so expensive that it'll take federal aid to build. New Mexico's congressional delegation has pushed spending measures through committees, but they won't hit the full House and Senate for several weeks.

Because those measures amount to congressional blessing of the settlement, there's great concern among our senators, representative and state and local officials that most everyone be on board — not just the State Engineer's Office, as successor to the late Steve Reynolds, but also the list of defendants that begins alphabetically with Lee Aamodt (including the publisher of The New Mexican), as well as county officials and the many non-landowning residents of the Tesuque-Pojoaque river basin.

That brings us to the public-opinion poll — which, this paper and another mistakenly reported, had 59 percent of Pojoaque Valley residents opposing the settlement. It was actually 59 percent of those land-owning non-pueblo residents polled — a big difference, since there are hundreds of apartment-dwellers and other rental residents there nowadays.

A growing number of non-pueblo residents for and against the settlement are saying no one asked them what they think — and folks on both sides of the issue point to petitions they've gathered as supportive evidence.

Still, those who did respond to the poll had strong concerns — mostly about having to cap their wells. Just a few years ago, that possibility threatened to unravel years of settlement negotiations — but as a result of the May, 2006 agreement signed with great ceremony at the state Capitol, families with domestic wells may choose to keep on pumping them and not join the water system. Many, however, have come to see the public-health advantages of a regional system — so opposition to the Aamodt settlement, on that count, should be fading.

The system itself is to begin at the Río Grande, just above the Otowi Bridge. The water would be piped to Pojoaque, where one line would run to Nambé, the other to Tesuque.

And where else? There's still lingering suspicion that water given up to the pueblos might in turn be sold to developers of land in the hills between Pojoaque and Santa Fe. The fairly recent creation of a so-far needless freeway interchange at Cuyamungué, and land and water deals between there and Chupadero, have further raised eyebrows — and worries about what bunch of suburbanites will be greening up their lawns on valley water when the next drought cycle strikes.

The pueblos have agreed to refrain from "priority calls" on water against non-pueblo users, if the non-pueblos agree to one of various dry-time options.

And, as compensation to the pueblos, the federal government is to bring in 2,500 acre-feet of water from outside the basin; easier said than done in the arid West.

Santa Fe County, for its part, is to acquire another 750 acre-feet as part of a 1,500-acre-feet supply to non-pueblo users. How?

Even as farmland gives way to more and more homes, much of the Aamodt-settlement opposition rests with concerns over traditional rural life — much of it centering on the acequia networks that irrigate the valleys of the Río Grande tributaries. But among pro-settlement folks are many champions of the acequias — and they say the settlement will build a stronger future for those community-based irrigation-ditch systems.

Pro-settlement arguments, better than they once were, still aren't gaining ground — so our congressional delegation must make its monetary pitch knowing that the case's punto final is still distant ...