The Santa Fe Watershed Association's new Arroyo Project

The Santa Fe Watershed Association is partnering with Santa Fe Brewing for the launch of SFBrewing's new Hefeweizen River Brew. The beer label will incorporate the SFWA's logo design (at left), and if this launch is similar to last year's partnership with the Santa Fe Conservation Trust, something like $.25 from each pint or can will go toward support of SFWA and their mission. Aside from rehabilitating the Santa Fe River (which is slowly rising back to life) SFWA's newest project is to begin restoration and cleanup work on some of our major arroyos. A fundraising goal of $10,000 has been set for the work they're planning which ties-in to the new marketing campaign for River Brew.

As it happens, I spend a fair amount of my time hanging out in arroyos as well as wedging in a minute here and there to admire the occasional pint of beer. The Desert Babe doesn't find either of these interests to be much of a coincidence. Point being, this project and fundraising effort is a stroke of unholy genius which includes a Beer/Project launch party on June 10th. It's as if they sat around brainstorming how to come up with raddest invite list to their summer party, and someone was like: What if we invite mostly just the cool people rockin' out the arroyos, and those hiking and biking the drainages and creeks, and those that love snow and the rain, and maybe maintain other trails in their spare time, and really like beer? NAAAILED IT.

Incredible Santa Fe arroyo map

This guest list self-selects of course. So head over to the fundraising page to get your ticket to the event, or a shirt, or a hat, or a package with all the stuff. If you're too lazy to do this then make a point to show up at Del Charro on June 10th for the party and bring your checkbook. Too lazy to remember any of this or too poor to part with $10-$20?, then show up to lend a hand with the arroyo work when that begins. For added incentive I'm going, and I've got two extra tickets for the event (which includes a pint glass) that I'll give away via random drawing to folks who will share, post, tweet or re-tweet the current fundraising effort. Add your name in the comments below that you shared and want to be included in the drawing. Add something witty or complimentary to bend the odds in your favor. You can also send an email if you're internet averse but an anonymous comment is strongly suggested. Something about how beer is delicious or a quip about your favorite arroyo is fine.

And with that, time for a run.

Related Posts:

 - Drink Beer - Support Local Trails

 - Santa Fe's Arroyo Systems

 - Charitable Giving to Area Outdoor Organizations

 - Craft Beer in New Mexico

New Mexico Snowpack Melts Six Weeks Early

Atalaya in storm clouds

Beautiful rainy week in northern New Mexico. I love it when it's like this. Ever run in the foothills when you're literally ascending/descending through cloud banks? Bad AF. One time I was up there with clouds and fresh spring snow but the snow was saturated and melting and all the ravines and drainages were running and cascading like a Japanese garden. Top 5 all-time run that one.

So I was checking out the area river gauge data to get a sense of how much rainfall arrived this week, and I saw something unexpected that made me kinda grumpy. Yeah there's enough rain in this week's storms to bring the Rio up 500 cfs. But when you look at the 60 day graph you can see that the 44 year average (the yellow triangles) are showing that we ought to be at peak snowpack runoff right now. The blue line however shows that our snowpack burned off the last two weeks of March. Not cool. Beautiful weather we're having but June/July could be rough when our water is chilling down in Elephant Butte.

Here's the Santa Fe River data. Same story. No average trend line to compare but the melt in March is clear as day with a longer tail than the flow in the Rio. No mames buey.  

Related Posts:
 - RAIN - NM River Flows Spike to 30 Times Avg Flows (2013)
 - Snowpack at Santa Fe & Taos Fall Short (2014)
 - Arroyo Washout (2014)

RAIN! - New Mexico River Levels Spike Upwards of 30 Times Average Flows

Lots of rain in New Mexico this week. How much? So much I can weed my yard without a trowel. A really cool novelty. Seriously though, it's so much rain that just about every drainage, rivulet, rito, creek, and river were bursting at the seams. Yay rain!

I don't have cool photos to post because my phone doesn't work well in the pouring rain, but I do have some cool graphs of the recorded water flows in the area via storm gauges. The information comes from the USGS water data website for New Mexico. Another great source to follow the storm has been Twitter, tag #nmwx (NM weather).

Here's the Santa Fe River (above the reservoirs). As can be seen the river has been running at a flow of 1.5 cubic feet per second (cfs) this Fall. The historical average for this time of year is 2.5cfs. Well, river discharge rocketed up to 170cfs last night and is at 140cfs as of Saturday morning. Up 100 fold. Think of the Rio Grande flowing through the gorge on the drive up to Taos. Near Embudo there the river has been running at around 250cfs the last several years. The Santa Fe Watershed approached that for a brief period last night.

Here's a view of the Rito Frijoles in Bandelier as a measure of the storm's intensity during the week. The Pajarito Plateau received rain in excess of 4" in places, half the year's average in a two day period. The canyon flashed from less than 1cfs to 1,000cfs. Four times the general flow of the Rio Grande near Embudo. That and the crests in the graph below are why Bandelier was closed yesterday and today.

A couple of images of just what 1,000cfs looks like in one of our little ritos, from the Bandelier Natl Monument Facebook page:

The Rito Frijoles near the visitors' center - Friday morning,  Sep. 13, 2013

The Frijoles wanders into visitor parking and the picnic area - Friday morning, Sep 13, 2013

And here's a view of what the Rio Grande looked like after all the arroyos and ritos and rios emptied their cargo into the mother drainage. From 250cfs to 9,000cfs yesterday near San Felipe. This is below the Cochiti dam. In other words, the pulse of water would have been much higher were not for the catchment below Santa Fe. A section of the Pecos River down near Roswell was gauged in excess of 30,000cfs on Wednesday morning. The highest measured flow on the Pecos since the 1930s. Now that, is no joke people.

Related Posts:
  - Frijoles Canyon in Recovery
  - Bandelier National Monument and Lummis Canyon
  - Santa Fe's Arroyos

The Colorado River and the Politics of Water

The Colorado River Watershed

A bit of back-page news from this week that is actually a bit of a ground-shaker: The varied parties to The Colorado Water Compact, which include CA, AZ, NV, UT, CO, NM, and Mexico, have agreed in principle to amend the landmark 1922 agreement on how to allocate the water from the Colorado River watershed. The communities and monied assets that depend on this trickle of desert water include Colorado's western slope, Phoenix, the city of Las Vegas including a large part of its power grid generated at Hoover Dam, Los Angeles and San Diego via extensive canal systems, and commercial farming in the valleys of southern California. A lot of stuff. Vegas and Phoenix would not exist without it, neither would the Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell.

I first became interested in this oddly academic topic after picking up a dog-eared copy of Cadillac Desert sometime in college. I was also making my way through Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang, and Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at the time. Cadillac Desert may be more of an enduring classic of the southwest than even those two blinding lights, ironic because of its dry, non-stylized, non-beer fueled, non-fiction subject.

Bishop Lamy's Chapel

In any case, there's an entire chapter in there about the original Colorado River Compact and how it all went down just north of Santa Fe here at Bishop's Lodge. A bunch of old guys sat down in a room right there at the Lodge and parceled out 90% of the available fresh water in the southwest, sent it out to the necessary law-making bodies, and it became law. Their signatures on the agreement a metaphorical spigot on the mighty Colorado, the very force of nature coursing down through millennia(?) of rock to route-out the mighty Grand Canyon! Funny thing is they screwed it all up, generously over-estimating average water flows by a not insignificant amount. For several decades now the river runs dry before making the Mexico border, and even in wet years it might carry only brine and brackish water unusable for crops or irrigation. The Mexicans have a problem with this but seeing as they are the party most down-river they've had little recourse other than monetary settlements.

Thought I'd try something a little different with a carousel of awesome books here

A portion of New Mexico's allotment actually arrives into the Chama via the extravagantly expensive and long-disputed San Juan Diversion Project. Water levels at El Vado and Abiqiui would be a lot lower if weren't for a bit of engineering and piped in runoff from the peaks above Pagosa.

In any case, this fascinating historical footnote always crosses my mind when I'm running or cycling past Bishop Lamy's old place. Interesting stuff. Reisner's book has been updated several times over the years and is still the benchmark for those seeking an understanding of the value and politics of water in the southwest.