Columns

Editor’s note: This column first appeared on Labor Day 2011.

If you are a working stiff, sweating away eight or more hours a day for someone who’s making the “big bucks,” there’s a good chance that you feel unappreciated.
Or, if you’re a boss, stressing out over all the problems that confront you, you probably know that, from time to time, it really is “lonely at the top.”

Last week we went into detail about how the City of Las Vegas and the acequias moved from litigation to negotiation and, unfortunately, back into litigation over Gallinas River water rights. Now let’s explore where the impasse currently stands — and how litigation is again getting in the way.

When the court-ordered legal proceedings to resume litigation, the acequias sought to continue negotiations and, at first, the city seemed to agree. Not so now.

Two weeks ago in this space, I told you about a couple of watershed tours I took with several others. The New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute organized a tour of the Gallinas Canyon watershed, where Las Vegas gets nearly all its water, and a second-day excursion to Raton, where we toured that city’s watershed, which burned a year ago.

Historically, there has been a thriving agricultural community in and around Las Vegas, based on the acequias — which can be understood as both physical structures to deliver water and communities of people with a proud tradition.

In the 1950s, the New Mexico Supreme Court gave the City of Las Vegas the right to take as much water as it needed from the Gallinas River under the so-called Pueblo Water Rights Doctrine. Using this decision, the city gradually increased the amount of water it diverted from the river until it was sometimes taking all the water available.