Water Matters!

13 Episodes

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Water Update (12/24/25)

2025-12-2409:39

When Irving Berlin penned “White Christmas” more than six decades ago, he did not have Albuquerque in mind. According to the National Weather Service, the chances of actually seeing falling flakes here on Christmas are about one in thirty. But that does not stop Rin Tara and John Fleck from hoping, scanning the long range weather forecasts as they write those last holiday cards and record their last podcast of 2025.

8: Shortage Sharing

2025-12-1922:29

The old Western cliché that whiskey’s for drinking while water is for fighting over has always been problematic. Frequently attributed to Mark Twain, it seems that Twain never said it. And research by the Utton Center’s Stephanie Russo Baca shows that sharing water – ensuring that no one goes dry when the water runs low – is a viable approach to New Mexico water management. In practice, New Mexico’s water law has always had an uneasy relationship with the “doctrine of prior appropriation,” th...

Water Update (12/10/25)

2025-12-1014:29

This week, Rin and John talk about flows on the Rio Grande, planning for a new federal river management project south of Socorro, groundwater contamination questions, and the future of federal clean water regulation. Rio Grande With the irrigation season over and the Rio Grande’s riparian vegetation shutting down for the winter, river flows are up through Albuquerque. But the biggest reason for the high flows is the annual Rio Grande Compact accounting exercise, as water stored in Abiquiu res...

7: Is Water for Fighting Over?

2025-11-2130:29

Guest: John Fleck A decade ago, the Utton Center's Writer in Residence John Fleck published his book Water is For Fighting Over and Other Myths About Water in the West, an exploration of water governance in the Colorado River Basin. Amid an often pessimistic literature, led by iconic titles that Fleck read as a young journalist - Mark Reisner's Cadillac Desertand Philip Fradkin's A River No More, among others - Water is For Fighting Over offered an optimistic narrative, stories of a governa...

Water Update (11/12/25)

2025-11-1209:09

Rin Tara and John Fleck discuss water conditions in New Mexico for the week of November 10.

Water Update (10/29/25)

2025-10-2911:30

Rin Tara and John Fleck discuss water conditions in New Mexico for the week of October 27. A full interview episode will be available later this month.

6: Adaptive Agriculture in Northern New Mexico

2025-10-1719:36

Irrigated from the Acequia del Llano running across the upper end of his four acres outside Española, New Mexico, Don Bustos' Santa Cruz Farms feels as if it has been there as long as the land itself. A rambling walk through the farm follows ditches carrying the water past patches of asparagus and the last of the blackberries, down one side past some new herbs Bustos is experimenting with - a path the water has traveled for the 400 years this land has been watered in the same traditional way....

5: Acequias in New Mexico

2025-09-2624:05

Acequias are a traditional irrigation practice with roots across the world. The inhabitants of New Mexico have used ditch irrigation since time immemorial, though the acequias used today took their present form about 400 years ago. Enrique Romero, head of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo division of the New Mexico Department of Justice, explains the history and governance of New Mexican acequias and discusses the theme of querencia.

4: Life on the Landscape, Documenting Change

2025-07-2534:53

Formed in a series of volcanic eruptions between 1 and 2 million years ago, the Jemez Mountains dominate the cultural and environmental history of central New Mexico. For more than four decades, forest ecologist Craig Allen has studied them, engaging in what has come to be known as “place-based ecology,” with deep roots in what the Nuevo Mexicanos would call “querencia” – a deep love and sense of place. The resulting of Craig’s passion is a vast body of scientific work that shed l...

3: Monsoon Season

2025-07-0416:11

New Mexico’s summer monsoon is upon us. The rainy season began the last week of June, bringing moist air north from the Gulf of California – pumping up flows in drying rivers, wetting forested landscapes and in the process reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires, and perhaps most importantly bringing the visceral joy that of rain. Streaming up through the mountains of central Mexico, the moisture from what scientists call the “North American Monsoon” brings 50 percent or more of t...

2: The Agro-Ecosystem of the Middle Rio Grande

2025-06-1233:48

The Middle Rio Grande is home to not only a myriad of species, but also to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD). At first blush, environmental water uses, and agricultural water uses may appear to be in conflict, but the truth is more complicated. This month Water Matters hosts Paul Tashjian, Director of Freshwater Conservation for Audubon Southwest, to discuss the agroecosystem of the Middle Rio Grande. Tashjian talks about the interconnected water uses throughout the MRG...

Deep Dive: Water for the Navajo Nation

2025-05-0932:09

Established by treaty in 1868, the modern boundaries of the Navajo Nation span 27,000 square miles across the deserts of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. While its water rights were guaranteed on paper in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1908 Winters decision, getting actual “wet water” to meet the needs of the nation’s 175,000 residents remains a challenge. This month the Utton Center’s Water Matters speaks with attorney Bidtah Becker, a University of New Mexico School of Law graduate who has be...

1: The San Juan-Chama Project

2025-04-0219:46

With one of the worst winter snowpacks on record, New Mexico’s water supply forecasts for 2025 look grim. Can we avoid the apocalypse? The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Rin Tara and John Fleck talk to Diane Agnew of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority about adapting to the realities of a changing climate. At a time in early spring when the Rio Grande should be rising, swollen with snowmelt, the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is shrinking instead. In a good year ...

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