Amigos Bravos is part of a coalition to request special Outstanding Natural Resource Waters protection for the Pecos River. Photo: Jim O’Donnell
Providing Leadership to Protect New Mexico’s Outstanding Water Resources
Outstanding Water (also known as Outstanding National Resource Waters or ONRWs) designations identify waters of exceptional recreational, environmental, or ecological significance and help ensure the qualities that make them so valuable remain unchanged.
By protecting existing water quality, Outstanding Water designations help ensure that our favorite places to swim, fish, boat and camp will remain as special as they are today. Once a water is designated as an Outstanding Water, preexisting activities can continue but new degradation (pollution) is forbidden. We are currently working to raise awareness of the importance of and the opportunity that Outstanding Water protections provide to New Mexico to protect our water resources in the current landscape of decreasing federal clean water protections.
Amigos Bravos provides leadership for the diverse Outstanding Waters Coalition that is made up of elected officials, irrigators, pueblo representatives, and other conservation groups and is supporting grassroots efforts to designate the Upper Pecos watershed as an Outstanding Water. In addition, we are in conversations with the state of New Mexico about other opportunities to protect New Mexico’s most special waters.
Pledge your support for protecting our New Mexico waters and ensuring access to traditional, and recreational uses and protecting the unique and rich New Mexico natural resources for generations to come. Click on the Take Action button below for sample language that you can use to pledge your support for special Outstanding National Resource Waters protections for the Pecos River. You may edit the body of the email text of the sample language to make it more personal, such as sharing a story about a special experience you had on the Pecos River as a child or how you use the river today to irrigate for growing crops or to fly fish.
Click to read an “Overview of ONRW Protections for the Pecos.” (The PDF will open in a new tab)
If you choose to draft and snail mail your letter of support, please be address your letter and salutation to the Commissioners of the NM Water Quality Control Commission and include the WQCC Case ID number below in your letter.
Click here to see case: WQCC 20-18 (R)
Snail mail address:
WQCC Administrator
P.O. Box 5469
Santa Fe, NM 87502
(If you snail mail your letter, if possible also email a copy of your letter to SupportPecosONRW@pecoswatershed.org
You may also use the TAKE ACTION template to voice your support for ONRW designation.
Click the TAKE ACTION button below.
