Albuquerque’s South Valley is surrounded by brown desert and towering red mesas.
But, inside the valley, the land is sprouting lush trees and green fields.
Here, the Rio Grande spills into irrigation ditches called acequias. They wind through the landscape of this small Hispanic community, carrying rain and snowmelt straight to crops.
“It's totally a gravity-fed system,” said farmer Santiago Maestas, gesturing to the acequia he gets water from. “You don't use machinery.”
No pumps, pipes or sprinklers. Just flowing water that feeds farmland the old-fashioned way – by flooding it. For decades, Maestas has been soaking his fields to grow apples, chili and corn.
“Our whole community basically is built around the irrigation canal or ditches – acequias as we call them,” Maestas said.
For hundreds of years, Hispanic communities across the Southwest have relied on these networks of hand-dug irrigation ditches to water their crops and feed their families. But now, these ancient traditions are under pressure from a changing climate and shrinking water supplies.
That has Maestas worried that their farming and cultural practices are at risk of fading into the past.
Spanish colonists began digging these ditches in the 1600s. Some of them are only a mile long. Others stretch more than 7 miles across mountainous terrain. Now, New Mexico has hundreds of acequias that function through community governance. Neighboring Colorado has a few dozen.
Farmers pay dues, elect a manager to oversee each acequia, and share in their cleaning and upkeep.
An hour north of Albuquerque, in La Cienega Valley, farmer JJ Gonzales was doing just that, scooping leaves, sticks, and sediment out of the acequia he manages.
“There’s always trash falling into the ditch. So, this is the stopping point for the debris,” Gonzales said.
He was at a headgate, which looked like a metal door set into the ditch that controls how much water gets released.
Gonzales said their water supply this year has been stable – so far. But, “usually, we get the rain in July and August, and it didn’t materialize this year,” he added.
That’s been the case most summers in the Southwest, said Thomas Swetnam, a climate scientist from the University of Arizona.
“The drought that we're in now, still, from the early 2000s to now, is the worst drought in 1,200 years in Arizona and New Mexico,” Swetnam said.
He said climate change is also increasing the risk of more frequent and intense wildfires, which can erode watersheds and cause more post-fire flash floods that damage acequia infrastructure.
That’s putting a lot of pressure on an ancient ditch system that relies on gravity and flood irrigation, said Andrea La Cruz Crawford of the New Mexico Acequia Commission, a state advisory board protecting and promoting acequias.
“We have a declining water supply. I think that's the number one threat,” La Cruz Crawford.
New Mexico’s river flows are down more than 50% this year, and experts predict the state’s total surface and groundwater supplies will shrink 25% in the coming decades, according to the non-profit New Mexico Water Advocates.
Drought isn’t the only driver, said La Cruz Crawford, noting that increasing development and population growth are also straining water resources and threatening the future of acequias.
And these earthen canals are worth preserving for a number of reasons, said Santiago Maestas. He pointed to research from New Mexico State University that shows they can hold water for long periods, and their seepage recharges groundwater that eventually returns to the river.
“Our valley’s green because of the acequias. Without the acequias, the valley would be just as dry as the mesas that surround us,” said Maestas, adding that the farmers in Albuquerque’s South Valley plan to keep it that way as long as they can.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between KUNR, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
