Yesterday (July 25, 2023) was the hottest day in Albuquerque history

By one measure of overall heat, yesterday (July 25, 2023) was the hottest day ever recorded in Albuquerque.

This is a tricky one, the sort of extreme I used to love back in my newspaper days when I needed a hook to slip stories like this past the filter of my editors. The daytime high of 103 was a daily record – the hottest July 25 in records going back to 1891.  (Can confirm that my bike commute home at 5 p.m. was unpleasant.) But it fell well short of the all time high, 107, on June 26, 1994.

But in a note sent around to CoCoRaHS observers, Michael Anand of the National Weather Service’s Albuquerque office did the full weather nerd thing for us, noting that the daily average temperature of 90 – the mid-point between overnight low and daily high – was the hottest by that measure in that aforementioned history of more than a century of record keeping.

Other records of note:

  • driest start to a summer monsoon, as measured by total measured rainfall at the official airport station since June 15 – just a trace
  • on track for hottest July ever, based again on that overall daily average temperature
  • longest streak of temperatures never dropping below 70 – 12 days, ending July 21
  • longest streak of daytime highs over 95 at 24 and counting (based on the current forecast, we’re gonna add at least 7 more days to that record)

But Michael’s news is not all bad!

Good news is that we are looking at indications of the high pressure responsible for the extreme heat to gradually weaken and shift east over the Great Plains early to mid next week allowing for temperatures to cool closer to normal for this time of the year as well as allow some monsoon moisture to enter western and eventually central NM! Let’s hope this signal pans out!

On Bridges

Members of Albuquerque’s Brownie camera club at the Barelas Bridge, circa 1916, courtesy Albuquerque Museum photo archive

The fancy new Barelas Bridge, built in 1910 across the Rio Grande on what was then the southern edge of Albuquerque, was a big deal. The Albuquerque Museum photo archive (some on line here, more that I’ve begun studying at the museum for possible use in the new book) has a bunch of pictures of the old Rio Grande bridges – people documented them, again and again.

Alameda Bridge, circa 1935.

The old Barelas Bridge was a wooden relic, rickety and unreliable. The new 1910 bridge was all steel and modernity. It allowed workers in Atrisco, across the river from Albuquerque, to reliably get to their jobs in the rail yard. It allowed farmers to get their crops to market. It, and a second bridge like it built around the same time at Alameda at the north end of town, made possible a community that spans a river.

When we think of the collective action problems around the Rio Grande that Albuquerque needed to solve to become a modern city, we mostly think about flood control, drainage, and irrigation. To understand a city, as I have written and said many times, you can always start with the water – the choices a community makes to solve water’s collective action challenges. Bridges belong on the list.

#GeographyByBike – Riding the Ribbons

Graffiti bird on freeway bridge piling looking out across dwindling Rio Grande with muddy sand in foreground and a blue with homes atop it in the background. Early morning golden light.

The Bird watching over a dwindling Rio Grande. To the right is the pedestrian-bicycle bridge, to the left is Interstate 40.

My mental map as I ride my bike across Albuquerque’s Rio Grande Valley floor has grown increasingly complex in the last six months as we’ve added layer upon layer of historic maps to the research for our forthcoming book Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City.

Yesterday morning, I rode at sunup, picking a path on sidestreets and the bike trail paralleling the freeway – a modern geographic feature that constrains Albuquerque’s urban form in a way similar to the way the Rio Grande served as an organizing principal for the human geography a century before. If you’re patient and have air conditioning in your car, it’ll get you all the way to Daggett in California’s Mojave Desert (I-40 actually ends in Barstow, just down the road, but Daggett has cooler stories).

The freeway bridge across the river is one of my favorite urban river spots, especially because of the graffiti. Regular readers should recognize one of Irot’s birds monitoring the Rio Grande on our behalf. The east side is just off the levee and easy to get to. The art is better on the west side, but getting there involves a gate, a very steep hill, and questionable legal behavior. I’ve only been once.

I rode early enough, to beat the heat, that the only business open was the methadone clinic, which was hopping. It’s in an underused industrial area, between the railroad tracks and what was once the American Lumber Company’s sawmill. The bike trail passes north of what’s now called the Sawmill District, which has some nice dense modern housing and a big food court open market thingie of the sort that’s all the rage right now. (Nobody goes there, it’s too crowded.)

Canal with water passing beneath a freeway with motel to the right and "Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District" sign in the foreground.

The Alameda Drain, passing beneath Interstate 40

A zig (zag?) through the neighborhood takes you past where the Alameda Drain passes under the freeway, another classic urban water feature. I need to go back to get a better picture, it’s a bit of a spectacle – lovely mini-ribbon of green with freeway off ramp and a motel.

The drains are so important to our book’s story, and so hard to get my head around. One of the central themes of the book is the way in which human communities completely rejiggered the valley’s hydrology, and the drains played an incredibly important role. Before they were dug in the 1930s, this area was swampy. My best guess based on nearby USGS groundwater monitoring data is that the depth to groundwater here today is 10-11 feet below the ground surface. The drains, dug in the 1930s, were designed to lower it to that level and drain the water off to the river for use downstream. In the process, the drains (along with levees to confine the Rio Grande to a narrow channel rather than spreading out in spring runoff), radically altered the valley floor.

That was the intent. As Steve Reynolds, the venerable New Mexico state engineer, once said, it’s hard to build a city in a swamp.

Just up the trail, I rode across what was once “Palmer Slough”, a favorite swimming hole for the locals, known for Boy Scout outings and the occasional drowning. The drains and levees acted like a moat between city and river, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around how the community’s relationship with the river changed, basically in a single year, as the draglines scraped their way down the valley floor.

Small irrigation ditch flowing through suburban gardens.

Water in the desert

Today it’s easy to get to the Rio Grande along this stretch because of walking trails and bridges across the drains. Yesterday’s bike ride used a big beefy metal bridge (slippery when wet!), strong enough for fire trucks to get in, a response to our big bosque fires of 2003.

On the way home, I rode up the valley to another bike trail that parallels the Alameda Drain. We’re slowly but surely repurposing them for recreation. I saw folks watering their lawn off of one of the irrigation ditches (in what I think is the old main house of Matthews Dairy, the dairy’s land long ago repurposed as subdivisions). And this, a little irrigation ditch through neighborhood gardens. It’s been screamin’ hot here the last couple of weeks, and I can really see the attraction. The repurposing of old irrigation ditches for gardens and bike trails is at the heart of our story about how the “ribbons of green” have made modern Albuquerque, but in a way very different from that which was intended when they were built.

We’ve repurposed the Rio Grande in the making of our modern American city.

 

Downtown Albuquerque News: My Favorite Albuquerque News Source

I was delighted when veteran journalist Peter Rice started publishing the Downtown Albuquerque News, an emailed daily M-F news source for downtown Albuquerque. I also figured it was nothing more than a happy experiment, and probably wouldn’t make it.

I am remain delighted with DAN as a reader, and am also delighted to have been wrong about the economics of the project. And I don’t even live downtown!

Today’s edition included the best writeup I could have hoped for about the challenge of redesigning Albuquerque’s bus network in the face of competing objectives – frequency of service versus spatial distribution. I use a car as little as possible, I mostly use a bike (regular or E, I have a lot of bikes), but the buses are a fallback that I frequently use. Peter’s deep, explanatory dive into the issue is a marvelous look at the tradeoffs involved, backed up by a thoughtful explanation of the survey data.

The biggest predictor of how people feel about the coverage/frequency question in practice turns out to be how much money they make and how often they actually ride buses. Riders who make less than $25,000 per year prefer spread-out-and-infrequent service by nine points. For the most frequent riders, it’s a tie. For higher-income (though often by no means rich) and less-frequent riders, however, the preference swings back to frequency.

I’m in that last camp (higher income and less frequent), but every time I ride the bus I am reminded that my privilege and desires are less important that “riders who make less than $25,000”. They need this more than I do.

So yes, Peter’s dishing out some of the best policy writing about stuff I care about, even if I live one neighborhood away.

But it’s also full of delightful whimsy about art and community.

Best $10 a month news buy I make (and I make quite a few).

Deadpool Diaries: mid-July Colorado River status report

Ringside seats to the decline of Lake Mead

Sometimes all we can do is sit and watch and wonder

When last we visited, Lake Mead sat at elevation 1,054.28 feet above sea level. It’s now at 1,058.34, which is up ~13 feet from when I took the above photo last December.

I hope they moved those chairs.

The good news is the current forecast calling for the combined storage of Lake Mead and Lake Powell to end the water year up nearly 5 million acre feet from a year ago.

The bad news is that total identifiable water use reductions in this year of chaotic crisis fire drill total just 1.2 million acre feet, according to the Bureau of Reclamation’s July 14, 2023 forecast.

State Base allocation 2023 2023 reduction percent cut from base 07/DCP Cut beyond 07/DCP
California 4,400,000 4,068,756 331,244 7.5% 0 7.5%
Arizona 2,800,000 2,008,505 791,495 28.3% 592,000 7.1%
Nevada 300,000 201,923 98,077 32.7% 17,000 27.0%
Total 7,500,000 6,279,184 1,220,816 16.3% 609,000 8.2%

 

This is not enough.

Who’s Using What?

Kudos to Southern Nevada, which at ~202kaf is on track for its lowest take on the Colorado River since 1992. Clark County’s population has nearly tripled in that time.

At ~860kaf, the Central Arizona Project is on track to make its lowest draw on the Colorado River since 1995.

At ~803kaf, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s forecast draw on the river is taking 12.5 percent less than its average over the last decade, but Met is weird because of California State Water Project wet year chaos, so I’m not sure I fully understand what they’re up to. (Jump in the comments and explain, Met friends!)

The Imperial Irrigation District is forecast to take ~2.5maf from the river this year, which is basically unchanged from its use over the previous decade.

What is Needed

The analysis by Jack Schmidt et al suggests that, based on 21st century hydrology, we need to cut 1.5 million acre feet per year just to stabilize the system. If we want to actually refill a bit, to provide cushion against the sort of catastrophe that was narrowly averted this year by a big snowpack, the cuts need to be even deeper.

Four decades of dithering, with the last big snowpack circled in red.

The above graph from their paper shows the problem. I’ve circled the last big snowpack year in red, and you can see the others as well. Every time we got bonus water, we just used it.

We need to avoid making that mistake again.

Thanks

A big thanks to friends of Inkstain for helping support this work.

 

 

Arizona v. Navajo Nation: What SCOTUS Didn’t Do Along the Colorado River

Faded image of men in the sun from the 1860s

Navajo Treaty signers at Fort Sumner, June 1868. (General William Nicholson Grier Collection, National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution)

A guest post by Friend of Inkstain Jason Robison, the Carl M. Williams Professor of Law & Social Responsibility at the University of Wyoming College of Law and chair of the Colorado River Research Group

By Jason Robison

A few weeks ago, on June 22, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) handed down its much-awaited decision in Arizona v. Navajo Nation. Twenty years in the making, but with a far longer backstory, the decision’s significance stems, in no small part, from what SCOTUS did not do, including vis-à-vis tribes with water rights held in trust by the federal government that may be affected by negotiations over Colorado River management between now and 2026.

Water Injustice on the Navajo’s “Permanent Home”

Too much historical context surrounds Arizona v. Navajo Nation to recount. In the big picture, this context encompasses the Crusades of medieval Europe; the Age of Discovery (read: Discovery Doctrine); and successive colonization efforts of Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans from 1540-present. I’ll highlight just a few pieces of the human and legal geography.

map of Colorado River Basin showing location of Native American lands

Native America in the Colorado River Basin

One of the Colorado River Basin’s most remarkable qualities is the rich presence of Native peoples. They have inhabited the basin, holding existential relationships with the river system, since time immemorial. At present, the Diné (Navajo) are one of 30 tribal sovereigns residing on 29 reservations across the basin, with the Navajo Reservation being the largest in the country: 27,413 square miles, slightly bigger than West Virginia. (Map to the right, here’s a bigger version.

An 1868 treaty established the Navajo Reservation, in a modest portion of the tribe’s vast traditional lands, designating it the Navajos’ “permanent home” and providing for farming and animal raising to take place there. An earlier 1849 treaty had called for the reservation’s eventual creation, as well as promised the Navajo would “forever remain” under the federal government’s “protection.” To be clear, though, the 1868 treaty enabled the Navajo to return to their “permanent home” only after enduring the tragic Long Walk, followed by the tribe’s inhumane internment at Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico, between 1864 and 1868—a shameful episode in U.S. history. The reservation later grew, in increments, to its current size.

The 1868 treaty raises a basic question: What’s needed on the dry Colorado Plateau for a tribe’s “permanent home” to be just that? Water is life. As recognized by the United Nations General Assembly, “the right to safe drinking water and sanitation [is] a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.” But you might not know it after spending time on the Navajo Reservation or reading the tribe’s complaint in the lawsuit.

“How did we get here, in this country, in the twenty-first century?” That pitch-perfect query, from the Navajo’s Supreme Court brief, captures the moral and emotional upshot of the water-access issues outlined in the tribe’s complaint (third amended complaint). In some parts of the reservation (i.e., the Coppermine region), “91% of Navajo households . . . lack access to water”; “[o]ver 30% of Navajo tribal members live without plumbing, and in some areas of the Navajo Reservation the percentage is much higher”; and while tribal members use “around 7 gallons of water per day for all of their household needs,” the U.S. average is 80-100 gallons. Water injustice of this sort is not unique among Colorado River Basin tribes.

From Surplus Guidelines to Cert Petitions

Arizona v. Navajo Nation aimed at this injustice. As with the broader context, the case’s procedural history is too lengthy to detail, but suffice it to say the litigation had run for roughly two decades before SCOTUS’s decision.

The Navajo Nation filed suit in 2003 against the Department of the Interior, Secretary of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. One claim was that these federal defendants had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), another was that they had breached trust obligations to the tribe, while developing the 2001 surplus guidelines for the Lower Colorado River. Three basin states intervened as defendants—Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado—joined by major agricultural and municipal water agencies, including Central Arizona Water Conservation District, Imperial Irrigation District, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Settlement negotiations spanned a decade but did not bear fruit. The case then moved through the lower federal courts from 2013-2022. In a nutshell, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona ruled against the Navajo in 2014, 2018, and 2019, and it was reversed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017 and 2022. SCOTUS’s decision focused on the 2022 opinion from the Ninth Circuit. Contrary to the district court, it held the Navajo’s third amended complaint stated a viable breach of trust claim against the federal defendants—a claim extended in the complaint to Colorado River management decisions beyond the 2001 surplus guidelines, including the 2007 shortage guidelines and Minute 323 to the U.S.-Mexico Treaty.

The tribe was thoughtful and strategic about its request for relief. One piece was an assessment by the federal defendants of “the extent to which the Nation requires water from sources other than the Little Colorado River to enable its reservation in Arizona to serve as a permanent homeland.” Another piece was inseparable: “a plan to secure the needed water.” A final piece was for the federal defendants to manage the Colorado River “in a manner that does not interfere with the plan to secure the water needed by the Navajo,” including “mitigation measures to offset any adverse effects” of management actions. An intertwined assessment, plan, and water management regime—that was the Navajos’ request.

With the Ninth Circuit’s 2022 opinion, this relief moved one step closer to reality, and the case rose to the national level. SCOTUS agreed to review it—granted certiorari—following a petition from the federal defendants and another from the basin states and agricultural and municipal water agencies. One question presented was about SCOTUS’s decree in the epic Colorado River case of Arizona v. California: Did the Ninth Circuit’s opinion infringe on the decree’s jurisdictional provision? Another question addressed the breach of trust claim: “Can the Nation state a cognizable claim for breach of trust consistent with this Court’s holding in Jicarilla based solely on unquantified implied rights to water under the Winters Doctrine?”

Arizona v. Navajo Nation & What Lies Downstream

SCOTUS split 5-4. Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch wrote the majority and dissenting opinions, respectively, and Justice Thomas penned a concurrence that won’t be discussed further below. My angle in wading through the decision is to emphasize what the Court did not do, rather than what it did, in an admitted attempt to see silver linings of some of the “nots” for negotiations over Colorado River management during the next several years—specifically, ongoing processes for developing replacements for the 2007 shortage guidelines, Drought Contingency Plans, and Minute 323, all slated to expire in 2026.

Quick work can be made of the Arizona v. California decree question. SCOTUS did not answer it. In the last footnote on the last page of the majority opinion, the Justices described the question as going to the case’s merits, not jurisdiction, and declined to do more.

That’s because of how the Court came out on the breach of trust claim. By the narrowest margin, the Justices diverged, with the majority applying (mistakenly according to the dissent) an analytical framework from a 2011 case noted above, Jicarilla Apache, to reject the Navajo’s claim. Despite this loss for the tribe, three aspects—again, silver linings—of the Court’s holding are worth considering in relation to what lies “downstream” along the Colorado River.

Handwritten text of Navajo Treatly

“The 1868 treaty reserved necessary water to accomplish the purpose of the Navajo Reservation.”

First, SCOTUS did not dilute the Winters doctrine. “When the United States establishes a tribal reservation,” described the majority, “the reservation generally includes . . . the right to use needed water on the reservation, referred to as reserved water rights.” The dissent recited the doctrine in full; flagged how the extent of the Navajos’ Winters rights has never been assessed; and canvassed the tribe’s persistent efforts to have its Lower Colorado River rights quantified, both in and since Arizona v. California. All told, Winters remains intact. It underpins the five basin tribes’ reserved rights quantified in Arizona v. California. It has spurred 17 negotiated settlements quantifying other basin tribes’ water rights from 1978-2022. And it is a foundation for future settlements (or adjudications) to address unresolved water rights claims held by nearly a dozen basin tribes. Resolving those claims is a basinwide policy priority that should be pursued in parallel with negotiations over post-2026 Colorado River management. The Navajos’ unquantified water rights along the Lower Colorado River and the Little Colorado River cannot go unmentioned here. Nor can the majority’s description of Winters’s application: “The 1868 treaty reserved necessary water to accomplish the purpose of the Navajo Reservation.”

Second, SCOTUS did not call into question the existence of a general trust relationship between the federal government and tribes in the context of policymaking over the Colorado River, even though the decision reinforces the Court’s strict test for bringing breach of trust claims in litigation against the federal trustee. As the majority acknowledged, “this Court’s precedents have stated that the United States maintains a general trust relationship with Indian tribes, including the Navajos.” The opinion surveyed past water-related legislation and infrastructure investments intended to satisfy “the United States’ obligations under the 1868 treaty.” The federal defendants’ brief contained the same content. Likewise, in key NEPA documents—e.g., the 2023 draft supplemental environmental impact statement on near-term Colorado River operations—the Bureau of Reclamation has described basin tribes’ water rights as “Indian Trust Assets,” “held in trust by the federal government for the benefit of Native American Tribes or individuals.” So despite the majority’s holding on the breach of trust claim in this specific case (see below), the general trust relationship remains intact in the policymaking context, including negotiations over post-2026 Colorado River management. Basin tribes should have meaningful opportunities to engage in the negotiations—perhaps as part of a Sovereign Governance Team—and negotiators should consider with care quantified and unresolved tribal water rights while developing reservoir operating rules, conservation programs, etc.

Third, SCOTUS did not preclude the Navajo or other basin tribes from bringing future breach of trust claims against the federal trustee, stemming from Colorado River management. The majority described the Navajo’s claim in this specific (narrow) way: “In the Tribe’s view, the 1868 treaty imposed a duty on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajos.” (Emphasis added.) While the dissent provided an extensive, well-reasoned analysis that supported interpreting the treaty precisely this way, the majority was unwilling. Nonetheless, the pivotal thing for my purposes is a distinction emphasized by the majority several times: “The Navajos’ claim is not that the United States has interfered with their water access.” (Emphasis added.) The dissent elaborated in this way:

While the Court finds the present complaint lacking because it understands it as seeking “affirmative steps,” the Court does not pass on other potential pleadings the Tribe might offer, such as those alleging direct interference with their water rights.

This distinction between affirmative steps versus non-interference is significant. What might a successful breach of trust claim rooted in federal interference with the Navajo’s (or other basin tribes’) water rights look like? As this question applies to negotiations over post-2026 Colorado River management, I won’t attempt to answer it now. But I’d be remiss not to flag it, as well as the distinction on which it’s based, among the notable aspects of SCOTUS’s decision.

My hope is the question doesn’t require an answer over the next few years of Colorado River governance. Winters remains a solid foundation for basin tribes’ quantified and as-yet unresolved water rights, and the general trust relationship applies to these water rights in policymaking processes. Despite its reinforcement (arguable misapplication) of the strict breach of trust analysis, Arizona v. Navajo Nation did not undo those bedrock principles. The dissent’s closing aspiration lies at their confluence: “some measure of justice will prevail in the end.”

Rio Grande still high through Albuquerque, but less so

River flanked by trees with mountains in the distance.

Rio Grande looking downstream from Albuquerque’s Route 66 bridge, Tuesday, July 4, 2023, ~1,100 cfs

The sandbars are starting to emerge from the Rio Grande as river managers drop the flow through Albuquerque to match inflow from upstream.

River flanked by trees with vegetated sandbar island.

Vegetated sandbar island north of Albuquerque’s Route 66 bridge. Tuesday, July 4, 2023

One of the things we’re watching as the river recedes is the vegetation on the sandbars. Did it survive the high flows? Over time, we’re seeing a trajectory from sandbar to vegetated island, which is raising interesting questions about consumptive use of water. As we wrestle with Rio Grande Compact delivery requirements to our neighbors in southern New Mexico and Texas, water use by riparian vegetation is part of the discussion. Is it going up? Do vegetated sandbar islands encroaching on the river channel cause it to increase, or does the evapotranspiration go down on a vegetated island compared to comparable stretches of open river?

The picture to the right is an example of one of the vegetated islands I watch. It’s just upstream from the Central Avenue bridge, picture taken yesterday morning, July 4, 2023. Landsat data suggests vegetation tried to get a foothold during the first decade of the 21st century, finally getting rooted for good in 2010. The willows (I think they’re willows?) clearly know what they’re doing, having survived relatively high flows in 2019 and this year that left the island well underwater.

It’s still an island, but flows this summer are likely to drop to the point you could walk out to it.

Ten days ago, there was four times as much water here, as the Army Corps of Engineers hustled water downstream to clear as much of the water as they could out of Abiquiu and Cochiti, the two upstream flood control reservoirs. The river didn’t exactly turn into a pumpkin July 1, but the Cinderella metaphor can do some useful work here. Once the calendar turned over to July 1, any water stored in the flood control dams has to stay there until fall, because rules that I’ve not taken the time to understand well enough to explain here. It looks like they got pretty much all of the water out of Cochiti Reservoir, which is good because of concerns about flooding of cool upstream habitat that would have otherwise been drowned all summer.

Abiquiu, on the Rio Chama, is still ~18 feet above median for this date, and that water will now stay there until fall, when we’ll get a big artificial pulse of water down the middle valley. The institutional hydrograph is weird.

Here’s the latest graph of flows this year at Albuquerque compared to the long term average. You can last week’s big drop. Two of the last five years wet, three dry.

graph showing high flows this year on the Rio Grande, compared to other recent years.

This year compared to other recent years at Albuquerque’s Central Avenue Bridge.

 

Bananas in Albuquerque history

New Mexico Produce sign on building that is probably no longer selling produce.

Bananas in New Mexico History.

Nearly every time I ride past this place, I take a picture and try to remember to write about bananas in Albuquerque history. I have quite a few pictures. Today is the day I remembered.

1943 newspaper article about banana heist

The great banana heist of 1943

It’s at First and Roma downtown, backing up on the railroad tracks, around the corner from the new at-grade railroad crossing, where I always detour my bike rides in the hope of being stopped by a train. I love being stopped by trains on bike rides.

The railroad is central to the book Bob Berrens and I are writing. The book’s name plate says it’s about the history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande, but you can’t tell this story without understanding the affect of the arrival of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway in 1880. In the push<->pull of river and growing city, the railroad provided a huge “oomph” on the “growing city” side of things.

New Mexico Produce began operations in the 1930s in a warehouse building backing up to the railroad tracks. But it was not the first. In 1931, J.L. Hutchison built what the Albuquerque Journal described as “one of the finest and most modern fruit and vegetable warehouses and cold storage plants in the southwest.”

Banana Rooms

Hutchison’s new plant, a couple of blocks to the south, also backed up onto the tracks. It had, per the Journal, “six banana rooms with a capacity for more than 1,000 bunches of bananas.”

1931 is an important year in the history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande. The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, created in the 1920s to bring flood control, drainage, and irrigation to the valley, was digging its first drains and throwing up its first levees. Here’s the Albuquerque Journal describing the connection between the creation of the district and Hutchison’s investment in cold storage and banana rooms.

The building is ideally situated, having railroad trackage on two sides. It was constructed with the idea of being in a position  to take care of tremendous shipping business, which Mr. Hutchison declares is certain to follow the completion of the conservancy project.

Here’s the thing. Hutchison was not building for  an export market. He was not setting up a business to help valley farmers export their crops. We don’t grow bananas here. He was building for the needs of a growing city for imported produce. The Hutchisons, J.L. and his wife (sorry, I don’t know her name, she’s just Mrs. Hutchison in the accounts of the day) were betting on a growing city, not on local agriculture.

Indeed, by the early 1930s the old Mann and Blueher truck gardens that sprang up to feed a growing population in the decades after the railroad’s arrival had largely been driven out of business by advances in refrigeration and the imported foods made possible by the new technologies. Local folks wanted fancy food! Bananas!

Hutchison graciously offered use of space next to his warehouse for the city to set up a marketing center for local producers. It appears nothing came of it.

Wholesale bananas today

If this were an actual book chapter and not just a blog post (which it probably needs to be, y’all see first sketches here) I’d run down the story of New Mexico’s 21st century banana warehouses. Not sure where they sit before they sit at the back of the produce section at Kroger’s. The best I’ve got right now as a closer is that the old New Mexico Produce building was converted in the 1980s to office space, and Hutchison’s old banana rooms, as near as I can tell, have been replaced by the parking garage for the Albuquerque Convention Center.

We don’t get much freight on the old rail lines. There’s an auto unloading complex south of town, but I never see freight trains this far north, only the Amtrak Southwest Chief eastbound to Chicago and westbound to LA, and the daily Rail Runner commuter trains to Santa Fe in the north and Belen in the south.

Our relationship with the railroad has changed. The city it wrought has too.

 

 

What next for Texas v. New Mexico Rio Grande suit?

Dani Prokop had a really helpful story last week explaining what happens next in the Texas v. New Mexico (and technically Colorado, too, right?) lawsuit over the rules for sharing the Rio Grande’s water.

To refresh memory, the three states in February announced a proposed settlement. Key bits from Dani’s update:

  • It’s not done yet. The court still has to approve it. Or not.
  • Lots of people in southern New Mexico hate it. The reason they hate it is…
  • Because folks on New Mexico’s lower Rio Grande will have to use less water than they are currently.

But because of climate change, and the compact changes, water use below Elephant Butte needs cuts and additional supplies, (State Engineer Mike Hamman) said. During the legislative session, the legal team for New Mexico said they expected cuts to 17,000 acre-feet in pumping below Elephant Butte.

The Office of the State Engineer’s plan – which said it needed more development and public involvement – called for buying 7,000 acres at $9,000 an acre, and a leasing program which would reduce another 3,500 acres over five years. The state estimated those two projects would cost about $76 million.

Dani’s work at SourceNM has become must read for New Mexico water stuff.