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 (05/06/26)
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In this week’s Water Matters, Rin Tara and John Fleck talk about the delightfully named “jiggle,” a series of pulses released from Isleta Diversion Dam downstream from Albuquerque. It’s a technique valuable in dry years to encourage the spawning of the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow. And this is a very dry year – the lowest flow ever recorded for late April, for example (when Rin and John recorded this), at the US Geological Survey’s historic Embudo Gage.
Links:
· A Silver Lining: Interpreting the Endangered Species Act to Envision Management of the Rio Grande Silvery Minnow in a Broader Cultural, Ecological, and Political Context, Rin’s paper on the silvery minnow in the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy
· Ribbons of Green, John’s new book with Bob Berrens about the history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande.
