Water Planning

History of Regional Water Planning

Following the 1987 legislation that directed the NMISC to conduct water planning, the state began with regional water plans. Each region was responsible for developing plans that were submitted to the NMISC for approval.

In the years following, regional planning entities formed and drafted plans. By the end of 2008, all the water planning regions had developed plans, ending the first round of regional water planning. The first regional plans were developed by regional planning entities largely in isolation from one another and a common problem was that many regions intended to continue to expand their use of water and often the source for additional water was a neighboring region. The problem of each region looking to its neighbor for more water is analogous in many ways to the issues underlying priority administration of individual water rights or interstate compact agreements: finding ways to allocate scarce water resources between neighbors requires cooperation, no matter the scale.

The 2008 regional water planning effort was mostly bottom-up, and the 2013 effort was mostly top-down. The 2013 approach was designed to make regional plans consistent statewide, in part so that they could be rolled into a State Water Plan. The methodology from 2013 included:

• Agency-calculated water supplies for each region under normal and drought conditions,
• 50-year projections for water demand based on population growth,
• Contractors to run meetings and develop planning materials, and
• A process for forming a steering committee composed of regional water users and their representatives.

The 2013 regional planning effort concluded by 2018 with updated plans for all regions. Many participants in the process were critical and expressed concerns about regional boundaries, the administrative water supply, the method for correlating population growth with increasing demand, and other issues. Reducing water use in response to reductions in available water