Town alert · Mora County · Acequias desk
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.
Everything below is the organizers' own account, published by them on August 27, 2026. Perfect World has not independently reviewed the Office of the State Engineer's order or the hydrology behind it. Where a figure appears, it is theirs.
Las Acequias de Cañoncito y Encinal are two community ditches in the Mora Valley, in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. Their organizers say the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer (OSE) issued a compliance order in December 2023 requiring them to close their headgate or face fines of $100 a day.
At the center of the dispute is a number called the Consumptive Irrigation Requirement — the CIR. It is the state's estimate of how much water a crop actually consumes on an acre of land in a given place, and in an adjudication it becomes the ceiling on what a water right is worth. Set it low and a ditch that has run for two centuries is suddenly using more water than the state says it is entitled to.
The organizers say the OSE set a CIR of 0.88 acre-feet per annum for the entire Mora Valley. They say their own hydrologist found 1.39 acre-feet per annum is what the land actually needs, and that the state's figure also sits below what was recorded in the 1960s.
The organizers say these acequias were dug in 1816, with the permission of Picuris Pueblo, and that they therefore predate the 1835 Mora Land Grant — an argument about seniority, which in western water law is close to everything.
Attorney fees, expert witnesses, court costs, research, and legal documentation. The organizers are Sandra Garcia of Cleveland, New Mexico, with co-organizers Andrew Lopas and Nina Wells; the named beneficiary is Las Acequias de Cañoncito y Encinal.
As of August 30, 2026, the campaign showed $1,150 raised from 9 donors against a $10,000 goal. Those totals move; that is the day we read them.
None, financially. This platform holds no funds, processes no donations, takes no cut, and gives no legal advice. The link on this page goes straight to the organizers' own campaign, and anything you give goes to them, not through us. We are carrying the notice because Mora County has no city hub on this site and no local newsroom obligated to carry it — which is exactly the gap this desk exists to cover.
The OSE's December 2023 compliance order itself, the hydrologic report behind the 0.88 figure, and any filing in the adjudication. If you have a copy of any of them, the record here should be built on the documents rather than on anyone's summary of them — including the organizers'.
There is a second, unrelated acequia fight in Mora County involving a quarry near the Mora River. It is real and it is reported, but we have not yet obtained the court filing or the county order, so it does not have a notice on this desk. A press summary is not a filing.