"Indo-Hispanos have lived side-by-side with Taos Pueblo Indians since the early 1600s. Following the great Pueblo Revolt of 1680, they’ve mostly gotten along. Water, of course, cares nothing for jurisdictional boundaries or cultural differences. It follows its own course, flowing from headwaters on Pueblo land into Hispano villages across the valley. And so, over the years, Indians and Hispanos were sometimes members of the same acequia, or ditch association.

That’s how it was, anyway, until legal adjudication of water rights came to town. The Abeyta adjudication, as it is officially termed, was filed in 1969 by the state of New Mexico to determine how much water exists in Taos Valley and who owns it. Water adjudications are mind-bogglingly technical, bureaucratic exercises in legally dividing up water rights – a precious resource in this naturally arid agricultural community. In the age of complex regional plumbing, over-appropriated river systems and thirsty, growing populations, adjudications have become necessary to manage the tangled mess of water rights. In the Abeyta case, the state needed to establish a baseline of legal water ownership before it could administer “imported” water from the other side of the continental divide by way of the San Juan-Chama diversion project.

Adversarial by their very nature, adjudications pit traditional water users against one another and often work to the benefit of other interests. “It’s a divide and conquer tactic,” says Quintana, “and the government and private development win.” Just downstream in the Pojoaque Valley, on the northern fringes of Santa Fe, the Aamodt adjudication dragged on for 40 litigious years and in the end left many water users high, dry and bitter. The final settlement appears to favor casinos, golf courses and increasing gentrification over agriculture and domestic well owners.

But Taos has taken a different course.

Taos Pueblo has a paramount aboriginal right to the water and is the primary player in the adjudication. But acequias – ancient Hispano irrigation and governance systems – have been around nearly 400 years and today represent about 7,000 parciantes, or water users, in Taos. The Taos Valley Acequia Association was founded in 1987 to represent all 55 local acequias in the adjudication. Its larger goal is the long-term sustainability of traditional agricultural communities."

Get the Story:
Ernest Atencio: The long road back to traditional water sharing in Taos (High Country News 7/10)