Topic: Feds sue to gain control over New Mexico's water

[Pandora]

State legislators taken by surprise

During Monday’s committee meeting ... lawyers representing the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer, Elephant Butte Irrigation District, and the city of Las Cruces, told the committee that a state Water Court hearing will be at 9 a.m. Wednesday ... and the future management of state’s water supply could hang in the balance of the hearing’s outcome.

“Why hasn’t this been front-page news?” asked a surprised Clinton D. Harden Jr., a state senator from Clovis. “This is one of the biggest things ever. Frankly, what we’re looking at is under the camel’s nose. This is an unprecedented legal claim to water.”

The lawyers told the committee the U.S. government is apparently trying to take over legal management of the state’s water supply. The federal government has asserted claims for damages to groundwater in a natural resource damage case in New Mexico involving Chevron/Molycorp. The claim seeks for those damages to be awarded in the form of future water rights management.

The federal government’s lawsuit has caught the attention of the Western Governors’ Association.

“Claims by federal trustees of this nature are unprecedented and are of great concern to the Western states,” said Pam O. Inmann, executive director of the Western Governors’ Association, in a letter to Tom Vilsack, secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Ken Salazar, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. “…The ramifications of such legal position extend to the very heart of the Western states exclusive ownership and/or management and control of the groundwater resources within their respective boundaries.”

Jay Stein, a lawyer representing the city of Las Cruces, who has filed as an intervener in the case, said the outcome of the hearing could potentially affect the city’s water supply.

... Foremost among these is the issue of the United States’ claims to “groundwater’ or to “project water in the ground,’ as they have termed it. These claims are not supported by any actual beneficial use of groundwater. Nor are they supported by state law which governs proceedings in the adjudication.

“These water claims are unqualified but potentially could amount to hundreds of thousands of acre-feet per year.”

[Libertas]

Uhh, yeah, well when Pammie stops sending letters and instead calls up a posse waving guns and saying "up yours" to Fed tyrants, I'm guiessing this really isn't much of a concern for folks...

[charlesoakwood]

They call NM a battleground state, actually it's a Democrat state
that will sometime swing.  This is a topic for local Pubbies to
get 'em dancing.