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I have not had the chance to read all the posts yet. We spent last year $28,000.00 for well, pump, electric etc., and had about 5-7 gpm. Last week we were lucky to get 5 gals period in one hour and it was mud water.
I read somewhere (got to find it) that the water upstream belongs to whoever is upstream??? The Zuni Nation I have been told is pulling thousands of gal's of water everyday and selling it to AZ for power plants.
NO CONFIRMATION ON THAT YET.
The realtors tell people and me, and I call them and ask, "oh, water is available"). What that means if Maybe you can get a well or you have to buy it....
Put in a storage tank etc. We have put in a 4500 gal tank and was told the well would fill it and hold it..
The state came out and checked to see that we had a well, well duh, and we could have up to 626 GALS per day..I laughed at them and said we were lucky to get 30 gals/day...no response..
BE sure you know you have water and how much, and what kind, and for how long.....know your rights..
HW
Thanks for reading the off the top of my head ramblings of a Yankee that could never understand why anyone was allowed to pollute water under the Eastern Riparian rights water law. My puzzlement with Western Prior appropriation law is just how and who determines “beneficial use”. Which is more beneficial: cooling a power plant, growing alfalfa, or providing drinking and sanitary water to a city?
You do pretty well for a Yankee. One of my best friends lives in central Maine and I've heard the same exact scenario described by him re:the paper companies and streams/rivers. I give him a hard time about being a Yankee too. It's all in good fun.
I believe that any of the legal uses for water are considered beneficial, as long as they make the land worth more with than it would be otherwise. Not positive about that though. I'll ask a colleague at the state engineers office. That would have exclude municipalities and domestic use - water treatment plants only make land value go up the further you get away from them if you know what I mean.
The adjudication is an interesting process. Determining who has used what and for how long. They went so far as to acquire and orthorectify a set of 1936 air photos (that I got a hold of at work). Those are REALLY cool. You can see the mighty Rio when it was still wild (before the canalization) and the amount of bosque we've lost is enough to make cry.
I'm a real estate person. Any agent who tries to explain to a buyer what they're getting as far as water, oil, gas, coal, etc. is asking for trouble. I've had documents in hand from the state engineer that absolutely confirmed that the particular parcel of land included adjudicated water rights but I didn't dare suggest to the buyer that they were guaranteed a single drop. That's what attorneys are paid to determine. Asking a realtor about water rights is like asking the receptionist in the dentist's office to perform your root canal surgery.
I absolutely agree with you. Unfortunately, way too many real estate people who don't know the tune about water rights will still hum a few bars for a prospective buyer to close a sale. Then the trouble starts.
Caveat emptor! Where something is scarce and needed it becomes valuable. I know I read that somewhere.
I have wondered why, outside of fresh veggies in winter, we ever bothered with large-scale irrigated agriculture in the desert. Why don't we grow the vegetables in say Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and other places that are relatively frost free and have more water than Arizona or Southern California. Instead we spend countless billions of dollars on the most extensive and expensive water works engineering and building in history. Just another puzzlement.
TKO - where do you work? I was fascinated by the aerial photo land use determinations in college. Converting mid '30's aerial photo pairs into digital GIS must have been quite a job and has got to be really useful.
One time I was looking at a set of geological survey quads of the Rhode Island and Connecticut coasts printed IRRC in 1931. Then I compared them to a set printed during WW2. The first showed houses crowded next to each other on the barrier beaches and the next set showed just how much the Hurricane of 1938 moved the beaches and eradicated the houses. Sometimes there isn’t enough water like in Atlanta now, and sometime there is too much like a 30+ ft storm surge in Providence, RI. Fascinating stuff.[/font][/color]
Best to not share too much information on a public forum Greg. PM me if you're really interested...suffice it to say I'm a geographer in my second career. I'll post a few samples of the '36 photos in the stickied photo thread. Air photo interpretation was one of my favorite coures in school too. I've always loved maps changing careers from appraisal to geography was the best move I ever made in my life.
Best to not share too much information on a public forum Greg. PM me if you're really interested...suffice it to say I'm a geographer in my second career. I'll post a few samples of the '36 photos in the stickied photo thread. Air photo interpretation was one of my favorite coures in school too. I've always loved maps changing careers from appraisal to geography was the best move I ever made in my life.
Caveat Emptor indeed.
I am really intrigued. Do you have any photos of Los Alamos when it was still the ranch school? Would you mind posting them? Pojoaque Valley?
Sorry, I am getting greedy.
Have you ever thought about publishing the photos? I think a lot of people would be interested in seeing them -- the amount of change since then would be fascinating. What was Santa Fe back then? 15,000 people?
Sorry Davin, they don't me belong to me to publish officially although they are public information. The set I have only encompasses the lower Rio Grande drainage from Arrey to Sunland Park. I don't know whether they have them for the northern part of the state but I'll see if I can find out.
Sorry Davin, they don't me belong to me to publish officially although they are public information. The set I have only encompasses the lower Rio Grande drainage from Arrey to Sunland Park. I don't know whether they have them for the northern part of the state but I'll see if I can find out.
Here is what Santa Fe County is doing to preserve water -- demanding that developers come up with water rights before they build. This particular builder (see link below) has scaled down his plans from more than 700 homes to fewer than 200 and maybe falling.
This has the effect of preserving water in the long run and protecting the interests of those of us who are already here.
It also, for better or worse, restricts supply and drives up land and home prices in this area. For those of us already here and thinking that we or our heirs may sell some day, it is plus.
And when I read about places in New Mexico that are growing like crazy, I wonder what they are doing/thinking about water? Will the well run dry (literally)??
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One of my best friends lives in central Maine and I've heard the same exact scenario described by him re:the paper companies and streams/rivers. I give him a hard time about being a Yankee too. It's all in good fun. 
Facinating photos.
Santa Fe County and Water and Building
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