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Governor
awards $350,000
in drought relief funds
for
EB Lake infrastructure with level to drop 25 feet
Prophecy
of doomed tourism
must
be avoided at all costs,
says
Economic Development Secretary
By
Bill Johnson of the Desert Journal
It’s being echoed all over the community and
state – say the lake is a mud puddle, watch hopes to draw tourism
dollars to the community go downhill with the mudslide. Or call it
mudslinging regardless whether it’s flung from the local, state or
national news media.
The state of New Mexico is taking risks
of its own to ensure that at least the infrastructure is in place as
prolonged drought continues to cast its adverse impacts on the state’s
largest recreational center – Elephant Butte Lake State Park.
But Elephant Butte Reservoir will be
anything but a mud bog for loyal and first time visitors as the state park
prepares to mitigate the potential disaster that another 25-foot drop –
in addition to last summer’s 50-foot decrease in the reservoir’s water
elevation – may have in store for existing infrastructure including
three marinas, four major concrete boat ramps and other shoreline and
public facilities.
Another big plus will be this Memorial
Day’s opening of the South Monticello Point Campground where the state
just finished building a $1 million fully developed campground with
multiple-lane concrete boat ramp.
Economic Development Secretary Rick
Homans said in a phone interview Thursday that Governor Bill Richardson
has allocated $350,000 from the state’s drought relief fund to make sure
the lake can continue to be used this summer for recreation.
Homans said the money is earmarked for
the state park’s infrastructure needs only, such as extending the
concrete pads at two of the park’s four major boat ramps so that boaters
will have access to the lake throughout the summer season.
He said two other boat ramps will have
topographical problems as the lake levels continue to plummet.
The emergency funding, however, can’t
be used for promoting or planning – just infrastructure, Homans said.
Homans said Gov. Richardson asked three
of his Cabinet members including himself, Tourism Secretary Fred Peralta
and Energy and Minerals Secretary Joanna Prukop to visit the Truth or
Consequences and Elephant Butte community to focus on solutions and look
to the future.
“We met with the governor before we
came down for the meeting on Tuesday,” said Homans, adding that’s when
he learned of the governor’s emergency provisions for the lake.
Another concern of Homans is the bad
publicity that Elephant Butte Lake has been getting since the state
announced plans to “drain” the lake without first consulting the
community about its plans.
In response, a group of demonstrators
converged on the state capital in Santa Fe recently to express their anger
and discontent over the governor’s decision to relinquish 122,500 acre
feet to Texas for credit. In return an equal amount of water will be
stored in reservoirs upstream of Elephant Butte.
“The demonstrations and placards need
to stop,” Homans said. Adverse publicity, he says, will make people
think twice about coming to Elephant Butte Lake for their recreation and
fun.
He said the cabinet secretaries will
have their public relations people work with the community in the area of
enhancing positive PR and publicity.
“There is a lot of interest in
Elephant Butte right now so we will try to use it to our best
advantage,” Homans said.
The same sentiment and admonishments
about bad PR ruining the lake’s reputation, and thus its revenue stream,
came out of a Monday night meeting in which officials of the Bureau of
Reclamation discussed their annual operating plans for the Rio Grande
Project, which includes Elephant Butte and Caballo Reservoirs.
“It’s not going to be a mud puddle
this summer – instead, it’s going to be a lake,” said one Bureau
official in assuring the 50 or so people who attended the meeting at Hot
Springs High School’s gym.
Ray Kirkpatrick, superintendent of
Elephant Butte Lake State Park, already has worked at improving the
lake’s image by easing strict enforcement of park regulations such as
getting law enforcement to issue warnings for first time minor offenses.
The local court system, which used to
be swamped with citations issued to visitors at the state park, now
reports that enforcement activities are no longer over zealous in getting
everyone to obey the laws of New Mexico.
Kirkpatrick said the state park
developed a low water level plan as the result of last year’s 50-foot
drop in lake elevation.
“We will maintain the boat ramps as
far as we can go,” Kirkpatrick said, adding that his crews are ready to
take facilities – picnic tables, grills, chemical portable toilets, etc.
– and pour concrete to the water’s edge “to keep things going as the
lake goes down.”
“We also will help the
concessionaires (marinas on the lake) move their facilities. We must
provide access to the marinas and do what we can do,” Kirkpatrick said.
“We also will open the Monticello campground this Memorial Day.”
Safety will be another issue and
Kirkpatrick said maintaining the buoy system on the lake will be critical
to prevent boating mishaps in shallow water. One local boater volunteered
to help mark the shallow areas of the lake for the buoy system.
“It will have to be maintained daily
to keep safe passage for boats,” Kirkpatrick said.
To promote and market the lake,
Kirkpatrick said the State Parks Division has reinstated camping permits.
“We are also working toward bringing back the annual camping pass,” he
said.
He said the state park so far has sold
2,500 season passes. “We’re also working on the fee structure.”
Besides the seasonal “Adventure
Passes,” Kirkpatrick said other marketing strategies for luring visitors
includes coupons in which visitors pay for two nights camping, but stay a
third night free.
“The governor last week sent people
from the tourism and economic development departments to see what we
need,” Kirkpatrick said. “The Department of Tourism is talking about
getting events here with media coverage. They said they have money to
throw our way. I’m happy to note something will happen.”
Kirkpatrick said last summer’s
drought impact on Elephant Butte Lake left a mess. “It took a long time
to clean it up. We do find cars underneath there. I don’t know what
we’ll do with another 30-foot drop (this summer),” he said.
Besides trying to remain sensitive and
taking positive steps to counter self-fulfilled prophecies and Chicken
Little’s “The sky is falling” alarm bells, Lane Pack in his article,
“SCEDO on the move,” last week commended the governor for a win-win
compromise in which at least 150,000 acre feet of water will be kept in
the reservoir’s storage for recreation this summer.
Pack said since his article was
published he was unjustifiably and harshly criticized by a member of the
local news media for not jumping on the bandwagon that bashed the governor
and his administration for making tough decisions in a difficult time.
Pack said he thinks the governor saved the lake for recreation this
summer.
Initially the state engineer wanted to
decrease the lake’s storage to below 50,000 acre feet in order to
relinquish more credit waters to Texas and hold an equal amount upstream,
virtually draining the lake.
The behavior of the climate over the
Rio Grande Basin has returned to its normal dry run, leaving behind nearly
10-15 years of unusually wet seasons and high water marks on the Butte,
according to Max Blot of the National Weather Service at the Santa Teresa
station in southern New Mexico.
But for eight consecutive years now
snowmelt runoff from mountains in the upper Rio Grande Basin, which
accounts for most of the Rio Grande Project’s water supply, has been
below average, according to Blot.
And for this year’s precipitation
prediction? “There’s nothing so far to suggest we’ll have tropical
monsoon weather this summer to replenish our state’s reservoirs,” Blot
said.
In the upper Rio Grande Basin in
southern Colorado, ground water is so low from drought that this year’s
snowmelt runoff is not reaching the streams, said Ray Abeyta of the Bureau
of Reclamation’s Albuquerque office.
“Most of their irrigation canals will
get no or very little water this summer. Basically storage in upper lakes
is way down,” he said.
“There is no feed. Ranchers are
selling out their cattle. Our area has been struggling with drought since
1996,” Abeyta said, adding that this struggle is typical for the
semi-arid southwest and that the wet years of a decade ago are abnormal.
“We’re trying to maximize what
little we have,” he said, adding that the Bureau’s operating plan will
accommodate recovery of the purportedly threatened or endangered Rio
Grande silvery minnow. “We’ll keep flows for the silvery minnow.”
Channel work from San Marcial to the
headwaters of Elephant Butte is now complete and connected, Abeyta said,
adding that the channel was made wider for heavier flows. He said the
river, however, will dry up from San Marcial to Isleta so that the Fish
and Wildlife Service can gather minnow eggs after June 15.
According to the operating plan, the
lake’s elevation will rise a little more than a half foot the next two
weeks, peaking out at an elevation of 4,328.95 feet on May 31 with a
storage of 365,197 acre feet. The lake’s surface area on May 31 will
likewise peak out at 10,902 surface acres.
Then water will be steadily released in
blocks and by July 4, when lake visitation is typically at its highest for
the season, the lake will have dropped seven feet to an elevation of
4,321.59 feet with a storage of 295,247 acre feet and covering 9,818
surface acres.
Through the rest of the recreation
season on the lake, the water level will continue to drop 18 feet by Sept.
9 when the lake recedes to an elevation of 4,303.76 feet with a storage of
151,136 acre feet and area covering 6,576 surface acres.
Although the Sept. 9 anticipated
storage represents only 7.5 percent of capacity (2 million acre feet), the
water surface will be about 18% of the potential 36,000 surface acres when
the Butte is full.
The projected lake elevations are based
on a 20% of normal snowmelt runoff flow expected at the San Marcial
gauging station 20 miles upstream of Elephant Butte’s headwaters March
through July this year.
Bureau officials said the runoff at San
Marcial would have been 43% of normal if the 122,500-acre feet were to
have been released from upper dams for storage in Elephant Butte.
About 415,000-acre feet are expected to
be released this year for irrigation in the Rio Grande Project and El Paso
County Water Improvement District No. 1 in West Texas, Reclamation
officials said. This year’s allocation of water is less than half of the
irrigation districts’ usual full allotment of 930,000-acre feet.
“We’ll also draw down Caballo
Reservoir, dropping it by 13 feet in elevation, to a storage of about
10,000 acre feet by September. Caballo hasn’t been that low since
1978,” Abeyta said.
“We’re looking at a 42-44%
allocation of full supply this year. The last 25 years we had a full
supply. Many farmers aren’t irrigating their full acreage this year,”
he said. “They also aren’t double cropping.”
Farmers also are taking only three to
four cuttings of hay this season when in the past they were getting seven
to eight cuttings a season. And they also are sensitive to the huge
investment in pecan orchards, so some farmers aren’t growing other
additional crops. “Others said they could get by on their pumps.”
To sum up the drought situation and its
impacts, everyone in New Mexico will have to suffer a little, opposed to
someone having to suffer a lot.
“The Rio Grande Compact intended to
spread drought impacts throughout the basin. It balances the inequities so
people don’t take all of the suffering,” Abeyta said.
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