Our View: Put Science to Work on Water Issues

Other Ogallala Aquifer-using states need to get on board, too

It’s great to see the congressional delegation representing our part of New Mexico once again in agreement when it comes to water.

Late last year, Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Pete Domenici, ranking Republican on that same committee, cosponsored a bill which, among other things, would replace the many myths about water with real figures on which sensible policy can be built.

It’s got one of those too-cute acronyms as a name: the SECURE — Science and Engineering to Comprehensively Understand and Responsibly Enhance — Water Act. Westerners long in need of such legislation no doubt will forgive whoever thought up that mouthful, as long as it doesn’t turn away prospective supporters.

As Sen. Bingaman notes, water always has been a priority in the West — and now, the stakes have been raised by drought, climate change and population growth.

Meanwhile, water issues are moving steadily eastward, perhaps owing to global warming.

Where the West and the Midwest meet, there’s the Ogallala Aquifer — one of the biggest underground water supplies in the world. It lies under parts of New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota. No one’s sure how much water it holds — but there are educated guesses that it’s being depleted at a rate of 10 million acre feet a year. So wouldn’t it be nice to know how long the farms, ranches and communities will be able to draw from it — and what can be done to keep it charged?

That huge aquifer is only one of many nationwide water concerns.

Cosponsors of the Bingaman-Domenici bill include Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Ken Salazar of Colorado and Jon Tester of Montana.

In Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, Republican senators face re- election races this year. Surely they would join the retiring Domenici in this effort on behalf of the Ogallala Aquifer and their other often-frail water resources.

Here in New Mexico, Democratic Rep. Tom Udall’s running for the Senate. His impending sponsorship of a House version of the bill should catch statewide attention. Reps. Steve Pearce and Heather Wilson, seeking the Republican Senate nomination, also should see the value of supporting it while all three remain in the House.

The bipartisan Senate measure would require the Bureau of Reclamation to initiate a climate-change adaptation program to develop strategies and conduct feasibility studies to address water shortages, conflicts and other impacts to water users and the environment.

And it authorizes that same bureau to provide financial assistance to states, tribes and local entities to build projects boosting water-use efficiency.

The bill would expand something called the National Streamflow Information Program — and develop a systematic groundwater monitoring program. And if all this is putting you to sleep, you’ve probably never had to worry whether water comes out your tap. Lots of folks out West are concerned about such things.

As Sen. Domenici puts it, “The more we understand about water, the better we will be able to meet the increasingly difficult problems in ensuring its availability.”

Both senators, and our representatives, should collar all the colleagues they can to pass this bill — one former Texas Gov. George W. Bush would be hard pressed to veto even if he weren’t in the process of shifting his stance on global warming.

This is as close to motherhood and apple pie as you can get with an environmental-awareness bill. We wish our delegation, and their early supporters, well with it.

(c) 2008 The Santa Fe New Mexican. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.