Santiago Maestas has grown apples, peaches, and apricots on his New Mexico property for more than five decades. He still cherishes the network of ancient gravity-fed irrigation ditches that deliver the water that keeps his orchard thriving.
Those irrigation ditches, scattered across the state and known as acequias (pronounced ah-SEH-kee-ahs), have endured for hundreds of years, Undark reports. For Maestas and other residents in Albuquerque’s South Valley, the communal irrigation system is an integral part of life in one of the country’s most arid regions.
“It’s what makes the valley green,” said Maestas, walking along a narrow, meandering acequia near his house on a summer morning. “It provides us with a canopy. It provides us with the ability to continue to grow crops in our backyards.”
The water that day flowed through the canal, flirting with the roots of lush, towering trees lining the dirt banks that Maestas strolled. In a small ditch, the gravel bed was dry and covered in weeds, a sight emblematic of dwindling water. Scientists say a lingering drought, warmer springs, and reduced water flow in the Rio Grande will intensify and further test the ancient irrigation systems.
Acequia users like Maestas are part of a collaboratively managed irrigation system that delivers water from ditches to crops and gardens. To cope with an increasingly dry environment, irrigators are already making some adjustments to the water flow. “We’re now on a three-week rotation,” he said. “One day every three weeks, we can deliver water. Earlier in the spring, when the river was full, we could deliver water every two weeks.”
As water becomes increasingly scarce in the drought-stricken U.S. Southwest, competition for the resource is intensifying. This worries users of New Mexico’s acequias, which research shows could help offset some effects of climate change as water seeps into the soil, replenishing groundwater that helps balance the water supply during scant rainfall. To safeguard their unique system, irrigators like Maestas are working on adapting to volatile weather, boosting acequias as a sustainable resource, and strengthening legal protections around water rights in a changing environment.
Acequia users say the ever-increasing treatment of water as a commodity that can be sold and traded, like gold and silver, goes against the traditional system, which emphasizes shared resources. The canals that have long sustained people still exist because of their communal bonds and deep connection to land and water, said Jorge Garcia, a South Valley resident. Acequias are a “system that carries not only our history, but also our spiritual values.”
In a water-stressed place like New Mexico, Garcia said, preserving acequias can ensure a continued supply of clean water for those who depend on it to grow food for their families and for the local community: “We have to protect the water that we have for future generations.”
Read more about New Mexico’s acequias on Undark.
