New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

New Mexico water governance is more complicated than anything presenter has anthropologically attempted. One part of the NM water story is an ongoing case, referred to as “Aamodt” after the first in a list of hundreds of names involved in the adjudication of water rights in the Pojaque river basin just north of Santa Fe. Ironically enough, the case, first filed in 1966, was brought about by the availability of new water with the San Juan/Chama tunnel connection between the Colorado and Rio Grande river basins. In the spirit of Victor Turner’s “social drama," the case can be viewed as “breach” and “crisis” that makes explicit centuries of accumulated contradictions that have made contemporary efforts at water policy in the face of increasing population and decreasing supply a political box canyon. The case makes clear how Turner’s third stage, “redressive action,” has remained contentious for decades and how his “reintegration” has been blocked by the intersection of ancient, historical and contemporary conflicting interests. The ultimate goal of the ongoing anthropological research, of which the Aamodt case is a buidling block, is to model the sort of environmental governance that would enable a more productive approach to the dilemma of more water on paper than water in the river, the latter diminishing with climate change. Time permitting, a few revisions of the principles of the traditional "Law of the River" will be proposed.