The Middle Rio Grande Valley Conservation District manages the river between Cochiti Pueblo and Elephant Butte. The ongoing drought has devastated water supplies in the Middle Valley. Water Operations Division Manager Anne Marken spoke with KUNM’s Mark Haslett about which parts of the river are currently dry.
Marken: This year has been one of the worst, if not the worst, year on record for Middle Valley water supply, and that’s really just a result of the record low snowpack we saw in the mountains this winter, the above average temperatures we’ve been experiencing, and a lackluster monsoon season, combined with incredibly dry basin conditions.
So when we do receive monsoon rain events, less of that water is showing up in the river because the landscape is so dry. It’s really just absorbing a lot more of it than we typically see, and that’s resulted in record low inflows into the the Middle Valley. Today, the release from Cochiti Reservoir is about 150 cubic feet per second, which is the lowest we’ve seen since 1988…