Water Matters!
The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Water Matters! podcast looks at water and natural resources issues in New Mexico and beyond. Housed at the University of New Mexico School of Law, the Utton Transboundary Resources Center is a state-funded research and public service project that believes in the pursuit of well informed, collaborative solutions to our natural resource challenges. The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Sairis Perez-Gomez designed the podcast logo and wrote and performed our theme music and Student Research Assistant Francesca Glaspell produced this episode.
Rin Tara is a staff attorney specializing in water policy and governance at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center. They are primarily interested in questions of water management in the face of climate change. They have done work in riparian restoration, river connectivity, tribal water sovereignty, climate change adaptation, and water rights. They have authored several papers on topics related to the future of western water management.
John Fleck is Writer in Residence at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico School of Law; and Professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance in the University of New Mexico Department of Economics. The former director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program, he is the author of four books on water in the west, including the forthcoming history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande – Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City.
Water Matters!
Water Update (01/14/26)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
The snowpack in the headwaters basins of northern New Mexico and Colorado points to another low-runoff year on New Mexico’s major rivers. The January federal forecast projects flows of less than half the most recent 30-year average on the Rio Grande at Otowi, the key measurement point for central New Mexico, and just 17 percent at San Marcial, just above Elephant Butte Reservoir. With three months of snow-accumulation season left, those numbers will go up or down depending on weather between now and when snowmelt begins in April. But water managers urge caution, saying the runoff is more likely to go down from the initial forecast than up.
The bad news for 2026 also includes extremely low reservoir levels, with little water left over from last year to make up for shortfalls in this year’s runoff.
Other topics on this week’s pod:
· The Department of the Interior’s Post-2026 Colorado River management Draft Environmental Impact Statement
Proposed budgets from the New Mexico Legislature and Governor
