Monday, Jul 25 2011 3:42PM
New Mexico officials are raising concern about a water settlement.
As the $66 million Abeyta water settlement in New Mexico begins to move forward, some officials are raising concerns with the plan, the Taos News reports.
The plan, also called the Taos Pueblo Indian Water Rights Act, was intended to lay years of water rights disputes to rest. A draft settlement was approved in 2006, but Congress didn't approve funding for the plan until last year.
As one of the first steps, the paper says the El Prado Water and Sanitation District has requested a series of transfers to make the district's well production allocation from 25 acre-feet per year to 575. Officials told the paper the district's 1,000 residents have actually been using between 100 and 130 acre-feet per year. The additional allocation would allow for future growth.
However, adding the additional wells called for in the plan has raised some concerns among scientists, saying the additional strain could threaten
water system services across the region.
"The subsurface is a vast unknown," Peggy Johnson, a hydrologist with the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources at New Mexico Tech, told The Taos News. "What we know about it is based on about a dozen holes placed around the valley over a huge area."