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!
10: Mapping Aquifers with the NMBGMR
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Guest: Stacy Timmons, Associate Director for Hydrology Programs at the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources
When the New Mexico legislature approved the Water Data Act in 2019, the state turned to Stacy Timmons to turn an idea into useful data tools to help communities around New Mexico manage a future with less water. Operating out of a third-floor office of the New Mexico Bureau of Geology building on the New Mexico Tech campus in Socorro, Timmons oversees the bureau’s efforts to figure out what sort of data communities need, and to help them get it - or get access to the myriad different kinds of data already being collected, turning it into useful tools.
The program’s latest project is using aerial surveys to measure water beneath the ground in places where there are not enough measurement wells to give communities the data they need to manage their aquifers. On this edition of Water Matters, Rin Tara and John Fleck talk with Timmons about groundwater measurement, aerial surveys, the importance of good data to support good decisions, and the joys of running along ditchbanks think about the water around us.
