In May, a late spring snowstorm buried New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains under three feet of fresh powder. On the heels of an alarmingly dry winter, it was welcome indeed.
The snow melted quickly into the Rio Grande, coursing south from the high desert to Albuquerque.
There, the runoff — and the unusual weather that generated it — was of particular interest to students at a high school named for the river, located a stone’s throw to the east.
The Rio Grande depends on snowfall in Colorado and New Mexico to supply farms and communities along its arid, 2,000-mile path to the Gulf of Mexico. For hundreds of years, a complex set of customs — woven into the cultures of the Native American, Mexican American and Anglo people who live in this part of the Southwest — has governed how the precious water is divided up.
Two years ago, Rio Grande High School adopted a focus on environmental sustainability and began teaching a novel blend of cutting-edge agricultural techniques and ancient land and water management practices…