LibGuides: Southwest Water Resources: Water Rights

New Mexico State Resources

NM Water Rights Reporting System (NMWRRS)

NMWRRS provides on-line access to the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer (OSE) water rights files including: electronic images of water rights documents, downloadable well reports, driller license reports, point of diversion reports, and subdivision reports.

New Mexico Adjudications and Settlements

Adjudication determines who owns what water rights and in what amount. They are required by statute. The purpose of adjudication is to obtain a judicial determination and definition of water rights within each stream system or underground basin so that the State Engineer may effectively perform water rights administration and meet New Mexico’s interstate stream obligations. The State Engineer is responsible for active adjudications, many of which have separate sections currently underway in federal and state courts in New Mexico. About 20 percent of the state has been adjudicated. More than 50 percent of the state has adjudications in progress. Active cases, hydrographic surveys, and settlements can all be viewed on the website for the Office of the State Engineer.

New Mexico Real-Time Water Measurement Information System

The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer/Interstate Stream Commission (OSE/ISC) engages in Active Water Resource Management (AWRM). This allows the State Engineer to actively manage the state's limited water resources while administering water rights and interstate compacts throughout the state. In order to do this, the OSE/ISC maintains a network of stream, acequia, ditch and well monitoring sites that electronically transmits data values via radio and satellite telemetry and stores the data in a database. This real-time water measurement data is available for each active gage/well shown on select basin maps. To find a specific gage/well click on the appropriate area on the state map.

National Resources

Native American Water Rights Settlement Project

The Native American Water Rights Settlement Project is a collection of documents that formalize recognition of Native American water rights in the United States. The project is supported by the Native American Rights Fund, the National Congress of American Indians and the Western States Water Council. The repository arranges by documents by settlement. It includes a map search-tool which allows searches by reservation/Tribe, by state, by hydrological unit and by document type. Red lines indicate reservations, green-fill with red borders indicate reservations with documents, dotted lines indicate states and blue lines indicate hydrological units.

Water Compacts

Cornerstone at the Confluence: Navigating the Colorado River Compact's Next Century by Jason A. Robison (Editor)
Call Number: SW 979.13 R6664 2022
ISBN: 9780816547630
Publication Date: 2022-11-08
Signed on November 24, 1922, the Colorado River Compact is the cornerstone of a proverbial pyramid--an elaborate body of laws colloquially called the "Law of the River" that governs how human beings use water from the river system dubbed the "American Nile." No fewer than forty million people have come to rely on the Colorado River system in modern times--a river system immersed in an unprecedented, unrelenting megadrought for more than two decades. Attempting to navigate this "new normal," policymakers are in the midst of negotiating new management rules for the river system, a process coinciding with the compact's centennial that must be completed by 2026. Animated by this remarkable confluence of events, Cornerstone at the Confluence leverages the centennial year to reflect on the compact and broader "Law of the River" to envision the future. It is a volume inviting dialogue about how the Colorado River system's flows should be apportioned given climate change, what should be done about environmental issues such as ecosystem restoration and biodiversity protection, and how long-standing issues of water justice facing Native American communities should be addressed. In one form or another, all these topics touch on the concept of "equity" embedded within the compact--a concept that tees up what is perhaps the foundational question confronted by Cornerstone at the Confluence: Who should have a seat at the table of Colorado River governance?
Dividing the waters : a century of controversy between the United States and Mexico by Norris Hundley
Call Number: SW 333.91 H933d 1966
Publication Date: 1963
Pecos River Compact : entered into by the states of New Mexico and Texas
Call Number: SW 333.9162 P369c 1948
Publication Date: 1948
The major purposes of this Compact are to provide for the equitable division and
apportionment of the use of the waters of the Pecos River; to promote interstate comity; to
remove causes of present and future controversies; to make secure and protect present
development within the states; to facilitate the construction of works for, (a) the salvage of
water, (b) the more efficient use of water, and (c) the protection of life and property from
floods.
Water and the West: the Colorado River Compact and the politics of water in the American West by Norris Hundley
Call Number: SW 333.91 H933w
ISBN: 0520027000
Publication Date: 1975-08-01
Model Interstate Water Compact by Jerome C. Muys; Marilyn C. O'Leary; George William Sherk
Call Number: SW 346.04691 M9939 2009
ISBN: 9780826346285
Publication Date: 2009-06-16
Over the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in bitter struggles over the supervision of interstate water systems throughout the country. The resulting legal actions have been of increasing concern to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, chaired by New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici. In 2000, as a result of Senator Domenici's efforts, the University of New Mexico Law School received funding for the Utton Transboundary Resources Center to draft an interstate water compact to address these disputes. Conferences conducted at the Center brought together lawyers and scientists from across the nation to discuss and offer insights into the complex water issues. The result is the Model Interstate Water Compact, which encourages states to assume oversight of trans-boundary resources, especially water, avoiding the inefficiency and expense of legal action. In addition to the authors' proposed model, there is a complete cross-referenced listing of existing interstate water compacts in the appendix.

By Archinia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

In Our Collection

Water for the People: The Acequia Heritage of New Mexico in a Global Context by Enrique R. Lamadrid (Editor); José A. Rivera (Editor)
Call Number: SW 333.9131609789 L213 2023
ISBN: 9780826364630
Publication Date: 2023-04-01
Water for the People features twenty-five essays by world-renowned acequia scholars and community members that highlight acequia culture, use, and history in New Mexico, northern Mexico, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Spain, the Middle East, Nepal, and the Philippines, situating New Mexico's acequia heritage and its inherent sustainable design within a global framework. The lush landscapes of the upper Río Grande watershed created by acequias dating from as far back as the late sixteenth century continue to irrigate their communities today despite threats of prolonged drought, urbanization, private water markets, extreme water scarcity, and climate change. Water for the People celebrates acequia practices and traditions worldwide and shows how these ancient irrigation systems continue to provide arid regions with a model for water governance, sustainable food systems, and community traditions that reaffirm a deep cultural and spiritual relationship with the land year after year.
The Man Who Thought He Owned Water: On the Brink with American Farms, Cities, and Food by Tershia d'Elgin
Call Number: SW 333.91309788 D3527 2016
ISBN: 9781607324959
Publication Date: 2016-08-15
The Man Who Thought He Owned Water is author Tershia d'Elgin's fresh take on the gravest challenge of our time--how to support urbanization without killing ourselves in the process. The gritty story of her family's experience with water rights on its Colorado farm provides essential background about American farms, food, and water administration in the West in the context of growing cities and climate change. Enchanting and informative, The Man Who Thought He Owned Water is an appeal for urban-rural cooperation over water and resiliency. When her father bought his farm--Big Bend Station--he also bought the ample water rights associated with the land and the South Platte River, confident that he had secured the necessary resources for a successful endeavor. Yet water immediately proved fickle, hard to defend, and sometimes dangerous. Eventually those rights were curtailed without compensation. Through her family's story, d'Elgin dramatically frames the personal-scale implications of water competition, revealing how water deals, infrastructure, transport, and management create economic growth but also sever human connections to Earth's most vital resource. She shows how water flows to cities at the expense of American-grown food, as rural land turns to desert, wildlife starves, the environment degrades, and climate change intensifies. Depicting deep love, obsession, and breathtaking landscape, The Man Who Thought He Owned Water is an impassioned call to rebalance our relationship with water. It will be of great interest to anyone seeking to understand the complex forces affecting water resources, food supply, food security, and biodiversity in America.
Command of the Waters: iron triangles, federal water development, and Indian water by Daniel C. McCool
Call Number: SW 333.91 M129
ISBN: 0520058461
Publication Date: 1987-01-01
Much has been written about legal questions surrounding Indian water rights; this book now places them in the political framework that also includes water development. McCool analyzes the two conflicting doctrines relating to water use--one based on federal case law governing the rights of Indians on reservations, the other sanctioned by legislation and applied to non-Indians--based on the "iron triangles" of bureaucrats, legislators, and interest groups that dominate policy issues. He examines the way federal and BIA water development programs have reacted to conflict, competition, and opportunity from the turn of the century to the 1980s and updates the situation in an introduction written for this edition.
Conflict on the Rio Grande: water and the law, 1879-1939 by Douglas R. Littlefield
Call Number: SW 333.91 L7353c 2008
ISBN: 9780806139982
Publication Date: 2009-04-16
The history of the Rio Grande since the late nineteenth century reflects the evolution of water-resource management in the West. It was here that the earliest interstate and international water-allocation problems pitted irrigators in southern New Mexico against farmers downstream in El Paso and Juarez, with the voluntary resolution of that conflict setting important precedents for national and international water law. In this first scholarly treatment of the politics of water law along the Rio Grande, Douglas R. Littlefield describes those early interstate and international water- apportionment conflicts and explains how they relate to the development of western water law and policy and to international relations with Mexico.
Water of enchantment : a citizen's guide to New Mexico water law by Tim J. De Young.
Call Number: SW 346.04691 D278
Publication Date: 1994
Fluid arguments: five centuries of western water conflict by Char Miller (Editor)
Call Number: SW 333.91 F6464 2001
ISBN: 0816520615
Publication Date: 2001-03-01
Water--or the lack of it--has shaped the contours of the American West and continues to dominate the region's development. From the incursions of the Spanish conquistadores to the dams of the New Deal era, humans have sought water in these arid lands as the key to survival and success. And as the West becomes more urbanized, water is an issue as never before. This book sets contemporary and often bitter debates over water in their historical contexts by examining some of the most contentious issues that have confronted the region over five centuries.
Forging New Rights in Western Waters by Robert G. Dunbar
Call Number: SW 346.04691 D899f
ISBN: 0803216637
Publication Date: 1983-08-01
The mythical pueblo rights doctrine: water administration in Hispanic New Mexico by Daniel Tyler; Iris H. Engstrand (Introduction by)
Call Number: SW 346.04691 T981m
ISBN: 0874041821
Publication Date: 1989-01-01
A 1958 case heard by the Supreme Court of New Mexico held that as a Spanish or Mexican town grew, it was entitled to take the water it needed to satisfy its expansion. Court cases in California have affirmed the "pueblo rights doctrine." Daniel Tyler, professor of history at Colorado State University, finds that this doctrine was not recognized by either the Spaniards or the Mexicans in the way it has been defined in United States courts. He carefully traces historic documents relating to water rights and concludes that the pueblo rights doctrine "never existed in Hispanic New Mexico."