Water year looks good

so far



By RUTH HEIDE

ALAMOSA — The Rio Grande Basin has a healthy snowpack, Division of Water Resources’ Craig Cotten told members of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District board on Tuesday.

Cotten said the basin is second highest in the state in terms of snowpack with 128 percent of normal. The Arkansas River Basin at 136 percent of normal is the highest, and all of the basins in the state are either close to or above 100 percent of snowpack. “Statewide we are really, really good,” he said.

Cotten cautioned that it is too early to tell what the year will bring but said at this point both the Upper Rio Grande Basin and Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range Basin are well above 100 percent of normal snowpack.

Almost all of the SNOTEl snow-precipitation measurement sites as of Tuesday recorded snow readings well above normal. For example, the Cumbres Trestle SNOTEl site was at 155 percent of normal and Wolf Creek Summit at 121 percent of normal. The North Costilla site in the Sangre range was at 180 percent of normal.

Cotten said the basin was above last year’s snowpack until a week and half to two weeks ago when the snowpack leveled off, “but we are still looking really good. We will have to wait and see.”

Cotten indicated the basin might have turned a crucial corner in overcoming drought conditions. He said that the 2007 and 2008 water years were both above average. “That’s the first time since the mid 1980’s that we have had two years in a row above average,” he said.

He added that between 2000 and 2004, when the basin experienced one of the worst droughts on record, only one year had above average flows while in the years since that time only one year has been below average.

On the Rio Grande Compact, the basin ended the year with an over-delivery to downstream states, Cotten said. He added that the engineer advisors from Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, the states participating in the Rio Grande Compact, will meet next month to firm up the figures, and they will report the final Compact statistics during the annual Rio Grande Compact meeting in El Paso, Texas, in March.

It appears that the Rio Grande will have over delivered about 9,350 acre feet in 2008 when all is said and done, and the Conejos River system will have over delivered about 450 acre feet in 2008 when all credits and adjustments are made.

Cotten said the Rio Grande was able to recharge water back into the San Luis Valley in November and December to lessen the total over delivery to the Compact. Ditches ran until November 8, and recharge began on November 9 and lasted until December 12, he said. The Rio Grande was able to recharge more than 18,000 acre feet during that time, the most by far in any year.

Cotten explained that the recharge helped the Rio Grande to decrease its over delivery to the Compact by a significant amount. “We were looking at 25,000 acre feet [over delivery] in November so that recharge did help a lot in that area,” he said.

The projected annual index on the Rio Grande was about 710,000 acre feet with about a third of that or 209,050 acre feet required to be sent downriver to meet Compact obligations. Curtailments were as high as 31 percent early in the irrigation season and steadily declined throughout the season. After the recharge period in November and December, the curtailments went to 100 percent for the winter.

The projected annual index on the Conejos River System was about 402,100 acre feet with 47 percent of that obligated to downstream states through the Compact. Native flows delivered 3,700 acre feet in December. Cotten said the expected over-delivery for the Conejos River system is 450 acre feet after credits and adjustments are accounted for, “which is really close, less than 1 percent.” That is the division’s goal to get the deliveries as close to zero as possible.

Curtailments on the Conejos system were as high as 52 percent at the beginning of the irrigation season and did not drop below 30 percent until August. Since the Conejos system does not have ditches with specific winter recharge rights, when the ditches were shut off on that system mid November, water rights went to 100 percent curtailment according to Cotten.

Cotten also reported on the status of the Rio Grande Compact storage at Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico. He said Elephant Butte Reservoir currently has 567,734 acre feet of storage right now and with a decent water year will remain above 400,000 acre feet, the magical number to keep the Rio Grande Basin out of “Article 7” restrictions affecting Platoro Reservoir storage. Cotten said right now almost 1,000 acre feet a day is coming into Elephant Butte with virtually nothing withdrawn at this point. However, the El Paso and Elephant Butte irrigation districts will start deliveries on February 18 and March 1, respectively.

Regarding precipitation forecasts, Cotten said New Mexico is predicted to be below average in the next three months and Colorado is on the cusp of that so the basin should be about average in precipitation long term, but temperatures are predicted to be above average.