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Comment by googlryas | Hacker News Reader

An important point here is that it is running dry "intentionally", because the water is otherwise being diverted for use.

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This isn't true. I live in Albuquerque about 1/4 of a mile from the river and there's literally no water anywhere. The ditches are dry, the reservoirs in the northern part of the state are tapped out, and the Albuquerque Water Authority stopped diverting water from the Rio Grande several months ago.

It is being diverted before it gets to Albequerque

Some of it is, yes. But a lot of the water flowing through the Albuquerque stretch comes from the Colorado River basin. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan–Chama_Project

The entire Colorado River basin is essentially running at critical levels.

Doesn't that mean mcone is correct, and the water isn't being diverted intentionally? The implication from the original comment seems to be humans are doing this on purpose, but the retort from mcone is that's misleading because there is no water and we couldn't fill it if we wanted to.

I am not an expert on this. I'm just reading the comments.

The answer is likely both: dry or drought conditions combined with high water usage leading to the river drying

The article says the Albuquerque drain is flowing at 130 cfs?

Their term for the subterranean water flow. The above ground river is just the top of what’s going on underground.

Per the USGS gauge[1], the current flows are 21.3 cubic feet per second. The historical low for July 22 is from 1980 when it was 60.0. The flows of the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is controlled by the Cochiti Dam, about 50 miles upriver. The dam is currently at 42 feet full[2], and is currently discharging about 300 cubic feet per second[3] (and appears to run continuously). So in the 50 miles between Cochiti Dam and Alb, about 280 cfs are being lost.

Maybe this is intentional diversion. But for what? I can only conceive of irrigation being the answer (but please call out other reasons). If it is just irrigation "intentionally" causing the river to run dry, that seems....really bad.

Given Cochiti Lake's low level, it won't be long before you can't irrigate those crops, so even the "use" of the water will be wasted. (Perhaps the worst outcome would be to intentionally divert the water to grow crops, but to run out of water before the crops grow fully. Then you've wasted the water and gotten nothing for it.)

[1] https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nm/nwis/uv?site_no=08330000 [2] https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nm/nwis/uv/?site_no=08317300&PARA... [3] https://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv?08317400

Google map of the area: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.5700851,-106.3533147,10454m/...

Oof! It is irrigated agriculture. :(

Thanks for the link, didn't think of that.

Before we go claiming that this is a-okay, WHY is it being diverted for use? Have other sources dried up? If so, that would still be really bad.

Yes. Lake Mead and reservoirs across the West half of the US are extremely low. Water originating from the Sierra Nevada range ended up at about 4% of the total water they would expect in a "normal" year.

California's most serious suggestion to this problem is laughable -- cover open irrigation canals with solar panels to reduce evaporation losses. While it will technically achieve something, it is not addressing any part of the root of the problem: wasteful water use on wasteful crops such as almonds, as well as the privatization and nonstop extraction of groundwater by Nestle and other bottlers. We could point to beef as another incredible consumer of water (when accounting for the full food chain) so reducing beef husbandry would be good (replace beef in your diet with chicken and pork for a couple weeks and see if you miss it).

That would be healthier for people as well.

Article wont load for me but part of the issue is that New Mexico can't store any in reservoirs as they owe Texas water due to an interstate compact.

https://apnews.com/article/albuquerque-droughts-weather-nort...

That article doesn't make things sound much better. It seems to pin the blame on persistent drought. The tactic of water being released from reservoirs upstream was used in the past as a band-aid over the symptoms of the drought, but isn't possible this year due to the water debt they have to Texas, as you mention.

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