New Mexico rivers rage, fields dry after slow federal fire aid
After a heavy snowfall, rivers are roaring up north in New Mexico. The irrigated pastures that Jimmy Sanchez and his family have tended for seven generations now are dry.
Sanchez worked in snow, mud, and ice clearing centuries-old irrigation ditches from fallen trees and debris that were left behind by the worst wildfire in state history, which had been started by the federal authorities in what was meant to be a controlled burning.
The problem is that water cannot flow from the Sangre de Cristo mountain peak, which rises to 12,000 feet (3,660 meters), into the Mora valley through earthen channels called acequias.
Sanchez, who is a mayordomo (or water caretaker), had hoped that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would provide funding to clear ditches, after the agency received $3.95 billion in compensation for communities affected by the 40-mile fire.
Help has not yet received more than a year after the U.S. Forest Service botched two prescribed burns that started the biggest fire in 2022 to occur within the contiguous United States.
“Our water comes down to give something back to Mother Earth, to our ecosystem. But right now, we are not able to do that because of so much bureaucracy and red tape,” said Sanchez.
Paula Garcia, a local irrigation leader, says that FEMA and federal assistance has only reached a few of the dozens acequias who requested help in November.
The survival of the Indo-Hispano farming and ranching culture is at stake. This culture was rooted in an ancient water system developed in the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean before Spanish colonists introduced acequias in the Southwest during the 1600s.
FEMA critics claim the agency’s capabilities are limited to coastal flooding and not wildfires in the West caused by climate change.
Hay fields and pastures in one of America’s poorest counties will remain unirrigated for a second consecutive year. The county has already suffered from years of drought, blamed on global warming.
In this mountain valley, where the villagers are spiritually attached to their land and call it “querencia,” flash flooding from burn scars has become a concern.
Garcia, executive director at the New Mexico Acequia Association said that it took time for FEMA understand the ditches. These are political subdivisions within the state, and they qualify for FEMA aid.
She said as she sat on sandbags in front of her Mora house, which faces flooding, “It is slow, but it is happening. FEMA has now dedicated staff to Acequias.”
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Angela Gladwell is in charge of FEMA’s compensation program, which covers the Hermit’s Peak Calf Canyon Fire.
She said that the agency was given 45 days to implement regulations. The rules were based on the Cerro Grand fire, a government-initiated blaze which burned residential areas in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 2000.
In response, the forests were treated as residential gardens with a compensation rate of 25 percent. Sanchez said that FEMA staff mistook acequias for storm drains.
Gladwell, speaking at the opening of the FEMA claim office in Mora, said that after angry protests the agency will be redrawing the rules and soon start partial compensation payments.
She said, “We will address all their losses in relation to trees.”
Gladwell, according to Antonia Roybal-Mack an attorney who represents acequias, residents and those who have lost their homes, should have been replaced by an independent claims administrator appointed from New Mexico.
“I don’t think they’re capable of the job,” said Roybal Mack, a Mora valley native.
Louie Trujillo is the mayor of Las Vegas, New Mexico. His city was just 20 days away from running out of drinking water when ash choked off its Rio Gallinas supply, one of America’s worst-endangered rivers.
The city of 13,000 received an initial payment $2.65million to design new water-treatment facilities. Trujillo acknowledged that he could understand the frustration and anger of the acequias, and the hundreds who lost their homes.
Trujillo said, “It’s like an ambulance is called and it takes forever for them to arrive.”
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