Middle Rio Grande Regional Water Plan

8. Implementation of Strategies to Meet Future Water Demand
An objective of the regional water planning update process is to identify strategies that will help
the region prepare to balance the gap between supply and demand and address other future water
management challenges, including infrastructure needs, protection of existing resources and
water quality, and the need to maximize limited resources through water conservation and reuse.
The supply and demand gap developed for this plan is based on withdrawals of water as reported
in the New Mexico Water Use by Categories 2010 report prepared by the New Mexico Office of
the State Engineer (NMOSE). The 2004 RWP for the Middle Rio Grande region identified over
40 recommended strategies to address this gap. The steering committee evaluated these
strategies by first discussing the progress made on these recommendations and then rating them
on priority for continued implementation.
This RWP is building on the 2004 RWP and is considering strategies that will enhance and
update, rather than replace, the strategies identified in the accepted water plan. The status of
strategies from the 2004 RWP is assessed in Section 8.1. Additional strategies recommended in
this RWP update—including a comprehensive table of projects, programs, and policies, key
collaborative projects, and recommendations for the state water plan—are discussed in
Section 8.3
8.1 Implementation of Strategies Identified in Previously Accepted Regional
Water Plans
An important focus of the RWP update process is to both identify strategies and facilitate their
implementation. To help address the implementation of new strategies, a review of the
implementation of previous strategies was first completed.
The steering committee carefully reviewed the strategies from Chapter 10 of the 2004 Middle
Rio Grande RWP over several meetings in 2015. Surveys were distributed to steering committee
members to gather information on new projects and programs developed since the 2004 RWP
was published. Projects from current Water Trust Board and Infrastructure and Capital
Improvement Plan (ICIP) databases were also compiled by NMISC consultants.
The 2004 RWP also contains two subregional plans for the Rio Puerco and Rio Jemez areas.
The steering committee did not specifically evaluate the strategies described in these sub-region
plans due to lack of representation from these areas on the committee.
Each of the 41 strategies was ranked on several criteria:
• Completeness: Y= Yes, complete; N=No, not started; S = Started, or partial achievement
• Progress/Effectiveness: 1 = Little to no progress and not effective 5 = Well
implemented and very effective
Middle Rio Grande Regional Water Plan 2017 184