New Mexico v. Federal Water Suits

Water Fight Leads to Lawsuit - New Mexico sues Federal Government Over Water Rights It's a battle for water as everyone is struggling under this year's harsh summer-time heat.

But now the New Mexico Attorney General, Gary King, is suing the federal government after it ordered the state to send 65,000 acre-feet or more than 21 billion gallons of water from Elephant Butte down to El Paso for the water improvement district. King filed the suit Monday against the Bureau of Reclamation, citing a breach of the Rio Grande Compact, designed in 1930 to equally divide the water from Elephant Butte between New Mexico and Texas based on farming irrigation need.

"The recent action of the BOR reflect a unilateral federal change in the compact accounting procedures used by all three states to the compact," King said in a statement.

Southern New Mexico farmers have been petitioning for more water since the beginning of the summer, and say it's the worst drought the area has seen since the 1950s.

The Bureau of Reclamation hasn't responded to the lawsuit yet.

The water originally reaches Elephant Butte from the spring runoff in Colorado. Currently, the reservoir is less than a third of capacity.

Feds File Suit Against New Mexico

It Begins… Federal Government Sues to Gain Control of Southern State’s Water Supply  It’s an Obama world… The federal government is suing to gain control of New Mexico’s water supply.

Las Cruces Sun-News reported:

Clearly, it was jolting news the New Mexico Legislature’s Water and Natural Resources Committee wasn’t prepared for.

During Monday’s committee meeting, in the Barbara Hubbard Room at the Pan American Center Annex, 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, at the Third Judicial Court Complex, 201 E. Picacho Ave., 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.

“In the pending water rights adjudication in state district court, here in Las Cruces, the court has turned to the United States’ claims. 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.”

City Utilities Director Jorge Garcia later added, “If the feds end up owning the groundwater, it would negatively affect any future water planning the city would want to do.”

Some legislators vented their frustrations with federal government. “This is the first I’ve heard of this contrived conspiracy,” Harden said. “Many times the federal government has no common sense what so ever,” said Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell.

Source: Las Cruces Sun-NewsPosted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, August 1, 2012, 5:32 AM NMGWA

Comments:

First the Feds shut off the water to California farmers to protect the snail darter (bait fish).  After that the Feds shut off the water for Tombstone AZ and bar them from repairing their water pump. Then they shut off the well water to farmers in Colorado during a drought.  They want to bankrupt rural farmers and move them to transit villages in metro areas as required in UN agenda 21.

It’s time for the federal government to give all federal land holdings back to the states and vamoose.  Obama wants the federal government to control our water so he can to give our water to the U.N.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader