The snowpack in the headwaters basins of northern New Mexico and Colorado points to another low-runoff year on New Mexico’s major rivers. The January federal forecast projects flows of less than half the most recent 30-year average on the Rio Grande at Otowi, the key measurement point for central New Mexico, and just 17 percent at San Marcial, just above Elephant Butte Reservoir. With three months of snow-accumulation season left, those numbers will go up or down depending on weather between now and when snowmelt begins in April. But water managers urge caution, saying the runoff is more likely to go down from the initial forecast than up.

The bad news for 2026 also includes extremely low reservoir levels, with little water left over from last year to make up for shortfalls in this year’s runoff.

Other topics on this week’s pod:

· The Department of the Interior’s Post-2026 Colorado River management Draft Environmental Impact Statement

Proposed budgets from the New Mexico Legislature and Governor

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.

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,” the legal principle that newcomers should have their water cut off in times of shortage to ensure that those who came first can get a full supply. Russo Baca’s work shows how formalizing water shortage-sharing agreements can serve as a viable alternative, keeping irrigation ditches flowing that might otherwise go dry.

In this episode of Water Matters, Rin Tara and John Fleck talk with Russo Baca about how shortage sharing agreements can work, about their cultural heritage in New Mexico’s deep history of water sharing, and about how the state’s laws are adapting in the 21st century to make these new arrangements possible.