Unsettled Waters
CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTS: NATURE, SCIENCE, AND POLITICS
Edited by Julie Guthman, Jake Kosek, and Rebecca Lave
The Critical Environments series publishes books that explore the political forms of life and the ecologies that emerge from histories of capitalism, militarism, racism, colonialism, and more.
1. Flame and Fortune in the American West: Urban Development, Environmental Change, and the Great Oakland Hills Fire, by Gregory L. Simon
2. Germ Wars: The Politics of Microbes and America’s Landscape of Fear, by Melanie Armstrong
3. Coral Whisperers: Scientists on the Brink, by Irus Braverman
4. Life without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay, by Daniel Renfrew
5. Unsettled Waters: Rights, Law, and Identity in the American West, by Eric P. Perramond
Unsettled Waters
Rights, Law, and Identity in the American West
Eric P. Perramond
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2019 Eric P. Perramond
Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-520-29935-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-520-29936-8 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-520-97112-7 (e-edition)
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations, Maps, and Tables
Introduction. The Cultures of Water Sovereignty in New Mexico
1. How Local Waters Become State Water
2. Aamodt, Dammit! Big Trouble in a Small Basin
3. Abeyta: Taos Struggles, Then Negotiates
4. Local Settlements Connect What State Adjudication Severed
PART TWO. THE PRODUCTION OF WATER EXPERTISE: THE ADJUDICATION-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
5. Changing Measures: How Expert Metrics Change Water
6. Working for the Adjudication-Industrial Complex
7. New Water Agents and Actors in Civil Society
PART THREE. ADJUDICATING THE UNKNOWN FUTURE OF NEW MEXICO’S WATER
8. City Water, Native Water, and the Unknown Future
9. Beyond Adjudication: Nature’s Share of Water
10. Water Coda, with No End in Sight
Notes
References
Index
Illustrations, Maps, and Tables
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. A hypothetical valley in New Mexico with acequias
2. Simplified flowchart of the water rights adjudication process in New Mexico
5. Photo of the statue of Pedro de Peralta and his colonial surveyor’s vara measuring stick
6. Typical water flume device employed by the Office of the State Engineer in its Active Water Resource Management program
7. Photo of map detail from the Taos Hydrographic Survey work done in the late 1960s
8. One example of expert water: an abstract diagram and screenshot of the San Juan-Chama and Middle Rio Grande waters, flows, and depletions
9. Tamara, a mayordoma on the upper Santa Barbara River, an unadjudicated watershed that is a tributary to the Rio Grande
10. Chupadero residents installing a liner in their ditch so that water from the upper ditches will reach farther downstream and replenish well water near the village of Chupadero
11. The dry bed of the Santa Fe River, in 2009, prior to the living river program enacted by the city to release up to one thousand acre-feet per year of water to the channel
12. Released water in the Santa Fe River channel, summer 2015
13. Colorado College students and Juan Estevan Arellano walk along the dry Acequia de la Junta y Ciénega ditch, on the lower Embudo River, in February 2014
MAPS
1. Interview locations included in Unsettled Waters
2. Distribution of acequias in New Mexico
3. Locations of completed and pending stream adjudications in New Mexico as of 2017
4. Map of the Aamodt adjudication area, the Pojoaque River Valley, showing the four major pueblos
5. Map of the San Juan-Chama Project
6. Map