Can’t make up for the lack of winter snowpack, but Easter Weekend’s snowstorm certainly provided a brief recharge to the Upper Rio Grande Basin. The month of April has left a bit more than a half-inch of precipitation for the San Luis Valley.
The spring conditions of the Upper Rio Grande Basin and Conejos River system are top of mind as representatives from Texas, New Mexico and Colorado arrive in Alamosa this week for the 110th meeting of the three-state commission.
A primer to the Rio Grande Compact meeting will be held Thursday evening at Adams State University when water attorneys David Robbins and Bill Paddock lecture at McDaniel Hall. More below:
Troubling southern mountains
The record-warm temperatures in February, another stretch of warm days and little moisture in March, and more record heat here in April have left the Upper Rio Grande Basin with half its normal flows for the spring runoff period. The Colorado Climate Center at CSU notes the Upper San Juan SNOTEL station near Wolf Creek Pass is recording the second-lowest peak snow-water equivalent (SWE) since the station was established in 1979, worse even than 2018 (which was a terrible drought and wildfire year in southwestern Colorado), though still ahead of the historic 2002 drought year. “The poor mountain snowpack and early melt-out this year align with the trends in Colorado’s southern mountains over the last 40-plus years. We’ve analyzed the trends at the SNOTEL stations that have data back to at least 1979, for both the peak SWE and the date of the peak SWE. In Colorado’s northern mountains, trends over the last 45 years are fairly modest overall, with some mixed signals. But in the southern mountains, the data make a very clear statement: snowpack is declining, and the peak is happening earlier,” noted Colorado Climate Center Director Russ Schumacher. He added that peak snow-water equivalent has declined by three to five percent per decade, and the peak has shifted two to four weeks earlier. All of which leads to a troubling May without some rain for the San Luis Valley.
Critical reduction in groundwater pumping
When you’re looking for positives in a year when the spring runoff is showing up as one of the lightest this century and irrigators are fearing for the worst, the most recent groundwater pumping levels out of the ag rich Subdistrict 1 will do. The subdistrict responsible for restoring a depleting unconfined aquifer recorded 176,000 acre-feet of pumping an irrigation season ago, making it the lowest pumping ever recorded since the subdistrict was formed in 2006. The reduction is significant. Just three years ago a groundwater pumping number of under 240,000 acre-feet was considered a victory for the Valley’s most lucrative farming area. What the future cost of groundwater pumping in Subdistrict 1 looks like will be the focus of a water trial in 2026.
Credit: Natural Resources Conservation Service
Making sense of water
If you truly want a lesson in water law and you’re hankering for a greater understanding of the three-state Rio Grande Compact accord, then a session with water attorney David Robbins is in order. Robbins, the attorney for the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, along with fellow attorney Bill Paddock, will lecture on Thursday evening at Adams State on Colorado water law, the Rio Grande Compact and the Valley’s efforts to manage its water. The lecture begins at 3 p.m. in McDaniel Hall. On Friday, members of the Rio Grande Compact Commission will meet at the Rio Grande Water Conservation District office beginning at 9 a.m. This will be the 110th meeting of the three-state commission.