Elephant Butte Reservoir

And so we may even go into 2027 actually running a slight surplus.

Important to note that the final compact calculation is very complex, doesn't happen until next year, but it's possible to do some preliminary math based on the amount of water that's coming past Ottowee and understanding how much of that is San Juan Channel water and looking at how much is going in and going out of Elephant Butte Reservoir to do a kind of rough calculation and get at least a feel for this.

And it looks like the recent September storms have been really, really good for New Mexico's compact status for the coming year.

So yay rain.

Uh, those states are Colorado, New Mexico, Texas.

What you specifically talked about was a settlement on what we call the Lower Rio Grande, so that is from Caballo, Elephant Butte and Caballo South.

Whenever I talk about the compact, though, I only exclusively talk about from Elephant Butte North.

Um-

And that's the Middle Rio Grande.

That's the Middle Rio Grande.

Nothing in the settlement from Elephant Butte and Caballo South affects what goes on north of Elephant Butte.

We're supposed to deliver water to Elephant Butte.

Pecos River rose a foot, over a foot.

And as of yesterday, water level at Elephant Butte is eight feet higher than it was at the end of August.

Oh, thank God.

Yeah.

They were-

Man, we still don't have enough.

I was, I was reading, uh, you know, they, they do these things, uh, talking about all the, the amount of rain the entire state of New Mexico got would fill Elephant Butte 10 times over.

Wow.

Sort it out.

Yeah, so hear me talk about Elephant Butte, though.

At least there's some good news for that.

Went from 1.5% to 4.7% capacity.

Just kidding.

No, but has anyone heard of this lake in New Mexico? It's called Elephant Butte.

Does anyone know about this? It's in southern New Mexico.

It was a really big lake, but I mean, just because, I don't know, it hasn't been raining as much down there.

And really importantly, we saw the Rio Grande come up.

So after a period of intense drying on the middle Rio Grande through New Mexico with more than 100 miles of dry river, the Rio Grande has completely reconnected now and is flowing all the way from Cochiti down to Elephant Butte Reservoir.

The readings on the river gauges are a little bit sketchy right now because the riverbed has changed in the dry season that we've had and then a lot of sediment movement.

So the U.S. Geological Survey is going to be out recalibrating some of these gauges.

Yeah.

And the important thing and the real value here as we think about the long-term water picture here in central New Mexico.

It's not so much the volume of water itself in the storm, not a lot, actually going down the river, making it to Elephant Butte, although it has the potential to help with our compact deficit.

But what it's doing is wetting The headwaters, the soils in the headwaters, the shallow aquifers in the headwaters.

We need to do more in New Mexico.

I understand the powers that be in New Mexico just let a whole bunch of water out of the Elephant Butte Reservoir because the Rio Grande went dry downstream of Albuquerque.

And I've been poking around to see if we can do an episode on that.

And that would be a start, but it would be a good start.