Keeping Rivers Flowing

By Staci Matlock, The Santa Fe New Mexican

Jan. 8–As New Mexico’s state engineer, John D’Antonio has legal power over all the state’s streams, rivers and underground waters.

Balancing that authority with the political and social realities of water is like walking through a mine field, D’Antonio said. “You want to make enough progress that you keep the momentum going forward without going so far that you step on a land mine, like a lawsuit, that stops everything,” D’Antonio said.

Three decades of booming population growth and the recent drought are forcing the state to deal withwater in a way it hasn’t had to previously, D’Antonio said. “The drought opened our eyes that we’re way behind in putting tools in place to actively manage our water resources,” he said.

“We have to put water masters in the field. We have to (enact) rules and regulations for water. We have to have those tools in place before we can go out and stop over-diversions (of water), illegal diversions and start enforcing by priority.”

The state has a window of opportunity to manage its water better, D’Antonio said. If it doesn’t, it faces

a federal takeover of water management on the Pecos River and the Rio Grande.

With legislators primed to divvy up a $700 million surplus and the governor declaring 2007 the “Year of Water,” this could be the year D’Antonio makes some headway in water issues long frustrating his predecessors.

D’Antonio is hoping for hefty funding to secure long-term water supplies for the state and to make sure the Rio Grande keeps flowing.

Learning the ropes

At 49, D’Antonio’s dark hair has only a touch of gray. He has the wiry build of a guy who’s metabolism is stuck on high. For an engineer and a technocrat, he talks in relatively plain layman’s terms. On the surface anyway, he fields tough questions from legislators, water users and the media with studied calm.

Off the job, he loves baseball and golfs when he can. With only Nick, the youngest of three children still living at home, he and his wife, Cassandra, look forward to traveling when he decides to leave water management.

D’Antonio was born and raised in Albuquerque, graduating from Del Norte High School. He wasn’t contemplating a career in water.

“I was a Northeast Heights kid. I had some relatives in the ranching business, but no one really in farming,” D’Antonio said. “As a family, we were very conservative in our use of water, maybe more because we’re a big family. But I wasn’t tied into water that much growing up, not like a fisherman or a farmer.”

He graduated from The University of New Mexico with a civil engineering degree. “Probably my best job offers after college were in structural engineering, but they were all out of state, and I wanted to stay in New Mexico,” he said. “My first day after I got my degree, I went to work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, on my 22nd birthday.”

He spent 15 years with the federal agency, designing flood controls like dams, resolving sediment problems, designing systems to move water. He learned to manage projects and large teams of people.

At one point, the agency needed someone to run the acequia program, which helps rebuild and renovate aging agricultural ditch systems.

He volunteered. “No one else wanted to do it,” D’Antonio said.

This was his introduction to the State Engineer’s Office and the hot-potato world of acequia politics. “It’s a tough program. There’s short windows for construction and a lot of work to be done,” D’Antonio said. “It’s a program that went through a lot of managers both on the stateand federal side over the years.”

Eight years ago, he was hired by then State Engineer Tom Turney, first to supervise the Albuquerque District Office and then to head Turney’s new water-allocation division.

D’Antonio has worked under governors from both parties. He’s been on the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force for Water Issues since 1998 under former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson and now Democrat Bill Richardson.

Johnson asked D’Antonio to fill in as Environment Department secretary for the last five months of his term in 2001. “That exposed me to water-quality issues and a lot of other issues the Environment Department was in charge of,” D’Antonio said. “I was in there studying every night. I felt like I was in finals. ? It was like drinking from a fire hose.”

Richardson tapped D’Antonio for the state engineer’s job in 2002. He now manages a staff of 334 and a $49 million budget.

D’Antonio’s colleague Estevan Lopez was asked to become the deputy engineer and the interstate stream commissioner. Lopez and D’Antonio work together to make sure New Mexico delivers water under the Rio Grande and Pecos River compacts to Texas. “I think it’s been a great partnership for effective water management in the state,” he said

More people, less water

Keeping the Rio Grande system in balance and meeting all the needs is a managerial nightmare. Drought isn’t helping. “Combine increasing demand with a variable water supply and a lack of adjudication, and those are some pretty big issues we need to fix,” D’Antonio said.

Protecting the rights of senior water users — mostly farmers and ranchers — is his priority by law. Under the state’s prior application system, he could shut off the flow to junior waterrights holders such as municipalities in times of drought.

“I think a lot of people don’t understand the prior appropriation system. They don’t understand water in the West is managed by prior use, and if we get into a scenario where water is short, their (junior) water legally can and will be shut off. They could be without water.”

D’Antonio wants to avoid this scenario by encouraging water users along the Rio Grande to share water during shortages. “The hammer is the draconian measure of priority administration,” D’Antonio said. “The carrot is alternative management through water sharing agreements. “People’s perception is that water’s always going to be there. That’s just not the case,” he said.

Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Santa Fe New Mexican

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