Photo - Brax. Valley Publishing Co

Chuy Reyes, General Manager for the El Paso County Water Improvement District # 1, indicated that for the first time in several years famers and small tract users have a full allocation.

What that means, according to Reyes, is that eveyone will have the 2 acre feet of water that is covered by their water taxes. Users can, if they need to, use up to 2 acre feet more up to a maximum of 4 acre feet. The second 2 acre feet must be paid for in addition to the regular water taxes.

The small tract users will get 11 scheduled waterings this year.

The increased water due to abundant rain and snow in the Fall of 2004 and the Winter of 2005 have provided a huge boost to the reservoirs. In some cases snow pack in norther New Mexico and Southwest Colorado was nearly 200% of normal. Unfortunately, the region has endured a drought and has not seen even normal amounts of snow for years.

One of the benefits of the full allocation is that farmers can plan and plant their crops with the certainty of plenty of water. Because many crops, such as cotton, require more than 2 acre feet of water, farmers pay extra for that additional water. This revenue helps the District as taxes have had to have been raised last year.

Revenues have been down during the drought and the new infusion of revenue will help the District in its day to day operations as well as long-term projects and purchases.

Reyes indicates that "The situation is better this year and because we are now able to provide a large allocation, so we will examine that and determine what the tax base will be for the upcoming year".

"We are self-sustained and we tax for what we do all year round... not just for what we do during the irrigation season but for the work we must do all year round. The winter is our maintenance season where we repair the canal banks and turnouts and such." said Reyes.

One of the problems this allocation may cause is that we don't know where in this drought period we are. If we use too much water this year we may be down to scarcity the next year or the year after that.

Reyes suggests that the snow pack was such that we may not be that bad off cone 2006. "Actually, we are not going to utilize all of the water that we have allocated to us by the Bureau of Reclamation. We will be in much better shape at the begining of the year, next year, than we have been for several years."

"We will leave more water at Elephant Butte than we have recently. We will cooperate with Elephant Butte Irrigation District and they are saving water in the dam this year also. Now, we don't get it all back due to loss by evaporation, but we get a good percentage back"

"This year we started out with only 200,000 acre feet at Elephant Butte Day and next year even if we don't have the snow that we had this year we will start out with about 400,000 acre feet... so we are in better shape" said Reyes.

This is why a full irrigation allocation was offered to the farmers who have had to stop planting or use pumped well water the last couple of years.

This years moisture could not have come at a better time. Since the Upper Valley Beacon has been published, we have been urging our readers and customers to "Think Snow".... "Think Rain". So it seems to be working. Keep it up.

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Editor, Upper Valley Beacon

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