| |
|
Spring 2000 Bulletin
Progress on Costilla: Restoring Flows and Clean Water
Over the past three years, and with support from the local community, Amigos Bravos has been lobbying the Commission–the body with ultimate authority over administration of the Costilla system–to overhaul and modernize the presently wasteful and ecologically harmful management of the system. At this year's Compact Commission meeting in Alamosa (May 5th), the Commission agreed that the draft operations manual would be used for more efficient water management this year, but would not be formally adopteduntil a trial run is complete and public concerns–including our own– areincorporated. Amigos Bravos will monitor the manual's environmentaleffectiveness, and we aim to challenge the manual's interpretation of the Costilla Creek Compact over how much water it really allocates to diversions and what is meant by' surplus water'. Another concern for Amigos Bravos is that the managers of Costilla Reservoir, built in the headwaters for irrigation storage in the 1940s, completely shut off water releases in winter and drastically reduce them at weekends in summer, dewatering the river immediately downstream (to the detriment of its rare Río Grande Cutthroat trout population), and exacerbating aggradation and water quality problems further down. Prior to 1991 when its earthen dam was rebuilt, Costilla Reservoir leaked a continuous 3 cfs–to the benefit of the stream section downstream now regularly dewatered in winter, when the reservoir stores but does not release flows. At the Commission meeting Amigos Bravos made the case for restoring this historical leakage from the dam. Low winter flows are probably the primary factor limiting the Río Grande Cutthroat population immediately downstream, and since 1998 the cutthroat–New Mexico's state fish–has been considered for listing as a federally Endangered Species. There are legal arguments for restoring these flows, such as whether appropriation of the leakage when the dam was rebuilt constituted a new and unauthorized use. And there are precedents for utilizing 'leakage' for environmental flows: it happened in the Owens River Gorge in 1994 when the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power's huge diversion pipe sprang a leak, and the Owens Valley community finally clawed back a small part of what they had lost to the metropolis following the notorious Owens Valley War in 1913. (The river in the Owens Gorge is now running again and could return to the superb trout fishery it once was.) Meanwhile the most detrimental water quality impact on the Río Costilla is contributed by sediments from Cordova Creek. In recognition of this fact, the New Mexico Environment Department has prepared a TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load of pollutants that can bedischarged into the stream) which recommends a number of voluntary Best Management Practices (BMPs). The Amigos Bravos Board of Directors is concerned that BMPs by being purely voluntary do not ensure compliance with the mandatory intent of TMDLs and the Clean Water Act. Amigos Bravos is now considering legal action to ensure that the BMPs are enforceable. Amigos Bravos' work on the Río Costilla is an example of how we achieve our mission, which is to: return New Mexico's rivers and the Río Grande watershed to drinkable quality wherever possible, and to contact quality everywhere else; to see that natural flows are maintained and where those flows have been disrupted by human intervention, to see that they are regulated to protect and reclaim the river ecosystem by approximating natural flows; and to preserve and restore the native riparian and riverine biodiversity. Amigos Bravos supports the environmentally sound, sustainable traditional ways of life of indigenous cultures and holds that environmental justice and social justice go hand in hand.
Following water rights transfers to development companies and construction of the Costilla Reservoir System in the 1940s, most of the flow of the Río Costilla has been diverted away from the natural floodplain into the Cerro Canal, serving large-scale irrigators. The river downstream often receives almost no flow, to the detriment of older acequias in Costilla and Garcia, the river and its bosque. Upstream the river is managed purely for irrigation, with impacts to native fisheries, water and substrate quality, and natural flows. Amigos Bravos aims to create the conditions for equitable and environmentally responsible water management, with the ultimate goal of sustainable development in the valley. Our strategy has been to build local support through continued community organizing and education, to apply legal pressure for reform of irrigation and pollution mismanagement, and to pressure the Costilla Compact Commission to overhaul water operations via new measures such as the watermaster manual and flow recording system inaugurated last year.
Please return to the Spring 2000 Bulletin Index.