Acequias · New Mexico

Acequias of New Mexico

Issues and news about the community ditches of New Mexico — the water rights they hold, the state proceedings that decide them, and what neighbors can still do about it.

The acequias of New Mexico

The 17 regions the New Mexico Acequia Association organizes by, with the 729 ditches the state's acequia layer names and 188 of its mapped points of diversion. That layer names some valleys richly and others not at all, so this is a picture of a dataset rather than a census of the state's acequias — each fieldguide draws on the fuller conveyance record. Open a region to read it.

Named acequiaPoint of diversionRegion with a fieldguideRegion, guide not writtenStream system under adjudication

Fieldguides · every region

Rio de Chama Acequia Association1,584 mapped ditches · 46 named · 5 diversions · Rio Arriba Upper Hondo Acequia Association1,017 mapped ditches · 136 named · Chaves, Lincoln, Otero Northern NM Water Protection Association676 mapped ditches · 98 named · Taos Rio Pojoaque Acequia & Water Well Association397 mapped ditches · 70 named · 22 diversions · Santa Fe Rios Quemado, en Medio, Frijoles, Santa Cruz AA232 mapped ditches · 18 named · 31 diversions · Mora, Rio Arriba, Santa Fe La Nueve Acequia del Rio Grande177 mapped ditches · 11 named · Rio Arriba Taos Valley Acequia Association142 mapped ditches · 14 named · 1 diversion · Taos Rio San Jose Acequia Association116 mapped ditches · 4 named · 37 diversions · Cibola Jemez Valley Acequia Coalition111 mapped ditches · 10 named · Sandoval South Valley Regional Acequia Association95 mapped ditches · 8 named · Bernalillo, Valencia La Asociacion de las Acequias - Mora Valley86 mapped ditches · 15 named · 7 diversions · Colfax, Mora, San Miguel, Taos Acequias Norteñas del Rio Arriba72 mapped ditches · 7 named · 11 diversions · Rio Arriba Embudo Valley Acequia Association68 mapped ditches · 7 named · Rio Arriba Rio Gallinas Acequia Association52 mapped ditches · 5 diversions · San Miguel El Rito Acequia Association3 mapped ditches · Rio Arriba Rios Vallecitos, Tusas, Ojo Calient AA2 mapped ditches · 1 named · 9 diversions · Rio Arriba, Taos Gallina & Capulin Acequia Association0 mapped ditches · 3 diversions · Rio Arriba, Sandoval

Ditches, diversion points, association regions and adjudication areas: New Mexico Office of the State Engineer, OSE GIS, retrieved 2026-08-31. Geometry simplified for statewide display; nothing moved, nothing invented. Full resolution is the OSE's. Not a survey product and nothing here should be measured off it. 13 of the 204 acequia diversions the state lists carry no coordinates in the source and so cannot be drawn: ACEQUIA ALCANTAR, ACEQUIA CHIQUITA, ACEQUIA DE JOSE PABLO GONZALES, ACEQUIA DE LA CIENEGA, ACEQUIA DE LA CIENEGA WEST, ACEQUIA DE LOS TRUJILLOS, ACEQUIA DEL OJITO, ACEQUIA LLANO DE LA YEGUA, ACEQUIA MADRE, ACEQUIA MEDIO, ASEQUIA DEL RIO PUERCO, MEDIO ACEQUI MADRE DITCH, UPPER SPRING ACEQUIA OJITO. A further 3 carry coordinates outside New Mexico altogether and are left off rather than plotted somewhere they are not: ACEQUIA DE LOS ESPINOSA (filed as SF, plots at 35.944, -109.7938); ACEQUIA DEL MOLINO (filed as RA, plots at 41.9846, -110.7704); ACEQUIA DEL POTRERO (filed as SF, plots at 35.9301, -109.7751). That is an error in the source, not a gap in it. 3 unnamed region polygons were left off.

Notices

Mora County: two acequias are fighting a state cut to their irrigation water

Las Acequias de Cañoncito y Encinal say the Office of the State Engineer ordered their headgate closed and set a valley-wide water allowance well below what their own hydrologist found the land needs.

Mora County · Watch · sourced August 30, 2026

Read the notice →

The Mora Valley, right now

The dispute on this desk is about a number — the Consumptive Irrigation Requirement — but the valley it happens in is measured. The acequia at the center of it is itself gaged, which is unusual, and the river below it has been measured since 1906.

Acequia

0.45 cfs

Cañoncito Ditch near Holman
The acequia at the center of the dispute, measured at the ditch. Record begins May 2017.
Read Sep 1, 9:00 AM MT

Acequia

0.62 cfs

La Sierra Ditch near Holman
A neighboring acequia off the same reach, gaged since 2003.
Read Sep 1, 9:00 AM MT

Acequia

0.00 cfs

Sierra Ditch near Chacon
Upper valley, above Holman — what is coming off the mountain.
Read Sep 1, 9:15 AM MT

River

3.88 cfs

Mora River at La Cueva
The main stem just below the acequia reach, and the longest record in the basin — first water year 1907.
Read Sep 1, 9:15 AM MT

Live from the USGS National Water Information System. Cubic feet per second — one cfs is about 449 gallons a minute. A tile that says no reading means the gage did not report, which is not the same as a dry ditch.

Mora County is in exceptional drought.

On the 2026-08-25 map, 100% of the county was in severe drought or worse and 35% was in D4, exceptional drought — the Drought Monitor's highest category. That is the condition the ditches are being asked to share water in. U.S. Drought Monitor, retrieved 2026-08-31.

What is actually running in the ditches

Daily mean flow, cubic feet per second, last 120 days. Source: USGS National Water Information System, gages 07214670 and 07214680.

Cañoncito Ditch near HolmanLa Sierra Ditch near Holman

See the numbers as a table

Date	Cañoncito Ditch near Holman (cfs)	La Sierra Ditch near Holman (cfs)
Aug 31	0.41	—
Aug 30	0.36	0.07
Aug 29	0.37	0.07
Aug 28	0.38	0.07
Aug 27	0.38	0.07
Aug 26	0.36	0.07
Aug 25	0.36	0.07
Aug 24	0.37	0.07
Aug 23	0.39	0.07
Aug 22	0.36	0.07
Aug 21	0.35	0.07
Aug 20	0.38	0.07
Aug 19	0.33	0.07
Aug 18	0.34	0.07
Aug 17	0.36	0.07
Aug 16	0.37	0.07
Aug 15	0.40	0.22
Aug 14	0.27	0.14
Aug 13	0.22	0.07
Aug 12	0.21	0.07
Aug 11	0.21	0.07
Aug 10	0.18	0.07
Aug 9	0.19	0.07
Aug 8	0.21	0.07
Aug 7	0.21	0.07
Aug 6	0.18	0.07
Aug 5	0.19	0.07
Aug 4	0.22	0.07
Aug 3	0.25	0.07
Aug 2	0.30	0.07

Most recent 30 days shown. The full record is on the USGS gage pages.

A century of the Mora River, at the gage below the ditches

Annual mean discharge by water year, cubic feet per second, 1907–2025. Source: USGS gage 07215500, Mora River at La Cueva. Years the gage did not record a full water year are absent rather than zero. Decades with fewer than five gaged years are not averaged.

Single water yearDecade mean

See the decade means as a table

Decade	Mean flow (cfs)	Water years gaged
1930s	23.7	8
1940s	40.2	10
1950s	20.1	10
1960s	29.4	10
1970s	21.8	10
1980s	34.4	10
1990s	38.1	10
2000s	12.9	10
2010s	17.6	10
2020s	26.6	6

This chart is not evidence about the CIR, in either direction.

A Consumptive Irrigation Requirement is an estimate of how much water a crop consumes on an acre. The chart above measures how much water flowed in a channel. They are different quantities, and a low river year does not tell you whether 0.88 acre-feet is the right figure for the Mora Valley. What the record does show is the range the valley has actually lived in — which is the context the dispute happens inside, and nothing more than that.

How much of Mora County, New Mexico has been in drought

Share of Mora County, New Mexico in severe drought or worse (D2–D4), weekly, 2000–2026. Source: U.S. Drought Monitor (National Drought Mitigation Center, USDA, NOAA). Categories are published cumulatively.

What this desk covers

An acequia is a community-governed irrigation ditch. In New Mexico it is also a political subdivision of the state, with elected commissioners and a mayordomo, and many of them are older than the state, the territory, and the counties drawn around them. Their business happens at the ditch, at the county, and at the Office of the State Engineer — almost never at a city council, which is why the rest of this site cannot carry it.

Office of the State Engineer (OSE): The state agency that administers New Mexico's water rights, issues permits, and enforces compliance orders.
Adjudication: The court process that decides, for every user on a stream system, how much water they have a right to and how old that right is. Seniority decides who gets water in a dry year.
Consumptive Irrigation Requirement (CIR): The state's estimate of how much water a crop actually consumes on an acre in a given place, in acre-feet per year. In an adjudication it becomes the ceiling on a water right — so the number itself is often what the fight is about.
Headgate: The gate where a ditch takes water from the river. Ordering one closed stops the whole ditch.

Where to get real help

Perfect World is not a law office and nothing on this desk is legal advice. These are the people who actually do this work.

New Mexico Acequia AssociationStatewide association of acequias — organizing, training, policy.OSE / ISC — AcequiasThe agency's own acequia program and its rules.Utton Transboundary Resources CenterUNM School of Law — New Mexico water law research and manuals.Acequia Assistance ProjectColorado Law — pro bono legal services to acequia communities.

What an acequia is, in law

An acequia is a unit of government

Acequias, or community ditches, are recognized under New Mexico law as political subdivisions of the state — not clubs, not co-ops. The OSE calls them, historically, a principal local government unit for the distribution and use of surface water.

Older than the state, the territory, and the counties

The OSE dates many of New Mexico's acequia associations to the Spanish colonization period of the 17th and 18th centuries.

They can take land, but they cannot tax

Acequia associations hold the power of eminent domain and may borrow money and contract for maintenance and improvements. They have no power to tax: the OSE states plainly that the expenses of maintenance and improvements are borne by the individuals served by the irrigation system. That is the sentence to keep in mind when an acequia has to hire a hydrologist and a lawyer — there is no levy to raise, only the parciantes.

The Legislature funds projects, one project at a time

The Legislature appropriates funds for specific acequia projects, including capital projects; Interstate Stream Commission staff review eligibility, execute the contracts, and inspect the finished work.

Every statement above is the Office of the State Engineer / Interstate Stream Commission, Acequias program page's own, read 2026-08-30. Read the page.

Reports and records

Every link here answered on the day it was added. Where we have not read a document ourselves, the note says so and we do not quote figures from it.

StatuteNMSA Chapter 73 — Special Districts (acequias and community ditches)New Mexico Compilation Commission, NMOneSource
The statute itself: how an acequia is organized, governed, and financed.AgencyAcequias / Community Ditches — program pageNM Office of the State Engineer / Interstate Stream Commission · read 2026-08-30
The agency's own description of what an acequia is and what it funds.ReportAcequia Issue Overview — presentation to the Land Grant CommitteePaula Garcia, for the New Mexico Legislature · May 30, 2025
Scanned slides with no text layer. Linked, not transcribed — we have not read the figures inside it and do not quote them.ReportAcequia Association Report to the Water and Natural Resources CommitteeNew Mexico Legislature · August 25, 2016
Background and policy issues as presented to the interim committee.GuidePre-adjudication strategies for acequiasNew Mexico Acequia Association · November 29, 2017
What an acequia can do BEFORE the state files, which is the stage most acequias are in and the stage where the record gets made.GuideA Water Rights Manual for Mutual Domestic Water Consumers AssociationsUtton Transboundary Resources Center, UNM School of Law
Written for domestic water associations rather than acequias, but the best plain-language explanation of New Mexico water rights, priority and adjudication we could find that is free to read.OrganizationAcequia Assistance ProjectUniversity of Colorado Law School
Pro bono legal services to acequia communities.OrganizationNew Mexico Acequia AssociationNMAA
Statewide association — organizing, training, policy, and the news feed on this page.DataCañoncito Ditch near Holman, NM — gage 07214670USGS National Water Information System · record begins May 2017
The acequia in the dispute, measured at the ditch. The full record, from the source.DataNew Mexico drought mapsU.S. Drought Monitor (NDMC / USDA / NOAA) · weekly
The weekly map behind the Mora County drought chart on this desk.

Where the meetings are

This is a list of where meetings get posted, not a calendar of them. We do not yet have a verified feed of acequia commission or Mora County agendas, and a schedule we could not check is worse than none — somebody would miss a meeting because of it. If you know the feed, tell us.

Interstate Stream Commission meetingsNM Office of the State Engineer / ISC
Where acequia project funding and basin business are taken up.New Mexico Legislaturenmlegis.gov
Interim committees — Land Grant, and Water and Natural Resources — are where acequia policy is argued between sessions. Handouts from those meetings are the two reports above.New Mexico Acequia Association eventsNMAA
Congreso de las Acequias, regional gatherings, and trainings.

From the acequia community

Published by the New Mexico Acequia Association. Not a news wire and not a keyword sweep — this is what the statewide association of acequias is saying about itself. Every link goes back to them.

Rocks, Sticks, and Soil: Tried and True Drought Resilience Strategies with Miguel SantistevanNew Mexico Acequia Association · Aug 9, 2026 Los Sembradores Reflection – Alejandro VigilNew Mexico Acequia Association · Jul 21, 2026 A Visit to El Tros FarmNew Mexico Acequia Association · Jul 7, 2026 Los Sembradores in MayNew Mexico Acequia Association · Jul 7, 2026 Sembradores plant, pray and dig into soil health!New Mexico Acequia Association · May 18, 2026 Welcome Los Sembradores 2026New Mexico Acequia Association · Apr 17, 2026

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