Water management policy for the Albuquerque Basin: What can we learn from Tucson?
- Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Albuquerque long believed itself to be a uniquely gifted city, an enchanted exotic anomaly, a desert metropolis with plentiful water stored in the deep alluvial sand and gravel sloughed off the Sandia Mountains. That is, until 1992, when the US Geological Survey`s report entitled Geohydrologic Framework and Hydrologic Conditions in the Albuquerque Basin in Central New Mexico revealed a fault, or rather several, in their water plan. The aquifer is not all of a piece. Instead of a veritable lake underfoot, there is a series of ponds or isolated cells of water. Tucson and Albuquerque have long been, in a sense, sister cities; they share similar physical situations, but with one major difference: in Tucson it has always been understood there wasn`t much water, not in the upland Sonoran Desert. The author outlines the recent history of water management policy in Tucson with possible lessons for Albuquerque. There are some very important differences between the two cities. The first is that in Tucson, water is, for the most part, a local issue. What Albuquerque decides to do with their water affects every community along the Rio Grande, but in addition, by rippling through the economy what they decide to do impacts every community in the state. And secondly, Tucson is the terminus of the Central Arizona Project (CAP).
- OSTI ID:
- 415642
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9411293-; TRN: IM9704%%273
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 39. annual Mexico water conference: water future of Albuquerque and middle Rio Grande Basin, Albuquerque, NM (United States), 3-4 Nov 1994; Other Information: PBD: 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of The water future of Albuquerque and Middle Rio Grande Basin: Proceedings of the 39. annual New Mexico water conference. WRRI report number 290; PB: 454 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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