Our view: Water-rights resolution will only get costlier

| The New Mexican

12/2/2007 -

With every passing season — especially the dry ones — the tension over rights to water ratchets tighter on this state where there's so little of it.

And with every new subdivision, every new business and industrial operation contributing to New Mexico's growth, the need to determine who controls how much water grows more urgent.

But as Staci Matlock reported in last Tuesday's New Mexican, the state's citizens are up against the costly process of water-rights adjudication. The very term hints at the price tag: Lawyers are involved. And to get today's cases settled quickly, not to mention those hiding 'round the bend of every stream, will take even more attorneys.

That was the message Monday from our state's top water official to members of the Legislature's Water and Natural Resources Committee. State Engineer John D'Antonio told them that, to settle all the claims, it would take at least $300 million — over the next half-century.

To us, that sounds molasses-in-January slow — and House Speaker Ben Luján seems to agree. He lives out in the Pojoaque Valley, where the Aamodt lawsuit involving Pueblo Indian and non-pueblo parties is only approaching resolution — 40 years after it was filed in federal court.

That's a lot of generations' worth of lawyer fees. And downriver, between Cochití Dam and Bosque del Apache, lies what D'Antonio calls "the mother of all adjudications" in the state: the 150,000 acres of the Middle Río Grande, including vast farms, several pueblos and Greater Albuquerque — nearly 900,000 people and still sprawling.

So with good reason, Santa Fe's Rep. Peter Wirth — himself an attorney and a member of a legislative subcommittee on water adjudications — pressed D'Antonio to say how much it would cost to speed up the process. Oh, an extra $10 million a year, came an offhand estimate in response.

We hope Reps. Luján and Wirth, along with their Roundhouse colleagues, can come up with the money — but at what cost to New Mexico's mostly substandard education system, and to an overdue investment in health care?

We're a petroleum-rich state with the good sense to tax oil and gas production — but the "permanent funds" from that revenue source already are being tapped by our legislators and our governor at higher rates than they once were.

Would another foray into those funds save our state money in the long run? Or can the Legislature find some other creative approaches to revenue-raising? Maybe. If we can find you the money, some of the assembled lawmakers asked D'Antonio last week, can you give us some clear timelines for water-rights resolution?

That might be a call for a crystal ball as well as computers. But if there are legislators that curious, he should lose no time preparing his best estimate. D'Antonio should include all reasonable add-ons, even if it means our senators and representatives might choke on the hypothetical tab. They're paying the price for nearly a century of failing to face up to water-rights issues with anything like adequate appropriations.

We're encouraged to see two of our area's legislators, and perhaps a few others, willing to at least think about making up for lost time.