Farmers in a Bad Place as Rio Grande Dries Up

Part of the Rio Grande River that flows through Albuquerque, New Mexico — and supplies farmers in the area — has run dry amid a drought slamming the Southwest.

“We’re pretty much out of water at this point,” Jason Casuga, CEO of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, told The Washington Post in an article published Friday.

Casuga noted that although some parts of the river run dry between the spring snowmelt and autumn rains, the section of the river near Albuquerque has not been like this since 1983.

“Most folks in Albuquerque who have lived here have grown up always seeing the river have water,” he said.

Trending:

DeSantis Isn’t Playing Nice – Trolls Biden Hard in Latest Speech Ahead of Potential 2024 Showdown

“So it would be a real big surprise to wake up and go outside and look at the river and realize, ‘hey there’s no water,’” he told the post.

But that was what took place Friday, he said.

The region has faced three years of severe drought. Some late June rain gave the parched land a dollop of relief, but July ushered in triple-digit highs.

Do reports like this worry you?

As of Thursday, more than 73 percent of New Mexico is labeled an area of “extreme” or “severe” drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Casuga said options to tap reservoirs or lakes to avert the dry river have either already been explored or are no longer practicable in the drought.

Casuga told KOB-TV in Albuquerque that the drought is hurting the region’s farmers.

Related:

Tragedy Strikes as Helicopter Returning from Wildfire Mission Plummets to Ground, Governor Orders Flags to Half-Mast

“We are working with our legislature on funding to support the farmers, maybe in times of drought, because this is what they do for a living, and if there’s not water, they can’t grow,” Casuga said, according to KOB-TV.

He noted that with the heat looking to continue, there is only one way the river can get back to normal.

“If you’re a praying sort of person, pray for rain,” Casuga said.

Glen Duggins, a farmer in Socorro County, south of Albuquerque, told KOB-TV that he has to pump his own water for his crops, because the Rio Grande can’t supply it.

“It comes at a price of about $500 a day,” Duggins told the station.

“People that have diesel pumps are even going to be at a bigger disadvantage. It’s going to be even more costly. And besides the cost of running the pumps, you have the cost of maintaining them, of drilling them in the first place.”

John Fleck, who is writing a book about the river, called it ‘a lovely puddly mess of mud.”

“But there is no longer water flowing from one puddle to the next. The official word this morning is that there’s a half a mile of drying,” he wrote in a blog post Friday.

“Even as the river’s surface flows dry, the ditches are drying too. Irrigators have been warned that absent rain, there will be very little to water their land very soon,” he wrote.



Source link

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*