By Mary Alice Murphy

The Gila/San Francisco Water Commission at its regular monthly meeting on Feb. 17, 2015, did not have a quorum, but had little business to conduct other than approving minutes. Chairman Anthony Gutierrez noted that at the prior special meeting retired engineer Norm Gaume had said the minutes from the regular meeting should have been approved at the special meeting. Gutierrez confirmed that Gaume had been correct, but lacking a quorum, the item and the minutes for the special meeting were tabled until the next meeting.

In public comments, Gerald Schultz, audience member representing the New Mexico Natural Resource and Conservation Districts, said NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Satellite Mission provides space-based insights into the global nature of groundwater depletion. The data produced by the satellites produces an anomaly map, which shows how much Earth's gravity field departs from "normal." The technology is sensitive enough to determine changes in the Earth's total water storage. Subtracting out the known surface storage yields the groundwater storage.

"While interstate and international agreements for sharing surface waters and rivers and lakes are plentiful, those for groundwater management are not," Schultz said. "Managing the global groundwater crisis will require raising awareness of these critical issues to the level of everyday understanding. I feel the GSFWC should also someday be involved in this awareness-raising activity, since all we might have to work with will be groundwater."

He also noted that, from his "many years of experience in water planning work," the number of projects that go to construction is small compared to the number of those that are studied.

Allyson Siwik, Gila Conservation Coalition executive director, said she wanted to bring to the commission's attention a bill that Sen. Howie Morales had filed. "Senate Bill 461 would fully fund all non-diversion alternatives. The Interstate Stream Commission has funded at roughly 10 percent the non-diversion alternatives. All the watershed restoration projects are tabled, as is the Grant County Water Supply System project. The bill would fully fund at $77 million, all the Catron County ditch improvements, the municipal conservation projects, and other non-diversion alternatives. The amount comes from estimates the ISC had given at its Nov. 24 meeting, using the original proposal estimates and the ISC's estimates."

"I think it's a great bill to bring everyone together, get the projects funded and going," Siwik continued. "It's going to be hard for irrigators to come up with 90 percent funding within the two years that they have to show they have it in hand. There is more than $90 million in AWSA funding. I think this is a great way for a win-win."

Mary Burton Riseley of the Gila Oak Land Trust said she is asking the same question she has asked before-"this time with urgency. I have talked to two lawyers versed in water law. My question is whether each one of you will have any immunity from being liable for lawsuits. Both lawyers said there are no grounds in law for a carry-over of immunity from your entity. What are your grounds for believing you would have immunity?"

The major portion of the meeting consisted of Norm Gaume's presentation to the water commission.

"This is the third time I've spoken to you, with the first two being in public comments," Gaume said. "The last time I requested being able to give you a presentation, which you have graciously allowed."

He recounted his growing up in Deming, with his Episcopal priest father and coming to visit his godfather, the Episcopal priest in Silver City. Gaume received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at New Mexico State University, as well as a master's degree in civil engineering.

"I began running water models, mostly for the federal government," Gaume said. "I became a maintenance engineer at the Albuquerque wastewater treatment plan. At that time Albuquerque was in crisis. I was charged with coming up with solutions. Pumps had been installed. They ran for three hours before sediment ruined them. Then I became Albuquerque water utilities manager and, when it was determined that Albuquerque did not have an unlimited aquifer, we had to develop the surface water."

He then served as Interstate Stream Commission director from 1997-2002.

"I believe the ISC has deceived you," Gaume states. "It has been deception by omission. I'm honest; I care about good government; and I care about you."

He said rivers mean different things to different people, "but this decision you face, should be made on facts. Due diligence requires you to ask questions. The facts preclude development of the water allocated by the Arizona Water Settlements Act." He talked about clichés, such as "don't buy a pig in a poke"; "can't let the cat out of the bag"; and "all that glitters is not gold," as analogies for what is happening.

"The ISC is entitled to its opinion, but the public is entitled to facts," Gaume stated. "The rights to the water are the most junior in New Mexico."

When Arizona wanted to move forward to develop the Central Arizona Project in the late 1960s, the state had to go through New Mexico U.S. Senator Clinton P. Anderson's committee, so he and the New Mexico State Engineer Steve Reynolds wanted something as part of the deal. Reynolds wanted water provided to New Mexico, diverted and stored in the proposed Hooker Dam. The dam was a mainstem Gila River dam, but also added was "or a suitable alternative," because the dam was not likely to happen. Hooker dam died due to environmental constraints, according to Gaume.

"While I was ISC director, Sen. Pete Domenici's staff approached the ISC," Gaume said. "Sen. Kyle of Arizona wanted federal authorization for Indian tribes' water rights in Arizona. Again, Kyle had to get it through Domenici's committee. Domenici asked me what I would like, and I said: 'Money.'

"When I left the ISC at the end of 2002, the amount of water allocated was still at 18,000 acre-feet annually," he said. "No Consumptive Use and Forbearance Act had been created, and still on the table was a large appropriation. Sen. Domenici played a large role in the negotiations. After I left, what was passed was the AWSA, with the water amount reduced to 14,000 acre-feet and the CUFA had been agreed upon. The CUFA replaced prescriptively what had been flexible. It codifies New Mexico rights at the most junior level. All intervening water rights all the way to the San Carlos Reservoir have to be fulfilled first before New Mexico gets any water. You need to understand the CUFA totally because it will be your Bible and bylaws, if you choose to be the CAP Entity."

He said he told people that a diversion wouldn't and couldn't happen, but then he attended the December 2013 ISC meeting on the optimization of the Tier I proposals. "It was swept behind closed doors to the Gila Subcommittee and never heard about again in open meeting."

Gaume said he met with ISC Gila Project Manager Craig Roepke and staff, and became more concerned. "Everything they talked about were only concepts with no statistics, no hard information. My suspicions went through the roof. You start with the availability of water, but they still talked about the 14,000 acre-feet."

"I filed freedom of information requests for their computations," Gaume continued. "I had wanted to receive their spreadsheet, but never did. I later inadvertently got it when it was attached to an email. I immediately compared its results to the results I had received from the ISC. Why would they give me data that was different from what they gave to the consultant?"

The Bohannon & Huston Inc. preliminary engineering report, issued in January 2014, contained the firm's preferred alternative as being in the Upper Gila Box through a tunnel into a huge pipe and then into all reservoirs.

"I determined it was fatally flawed because of sediment," Gaume said. "The screen they used in the report will filter out coarse sand, but not the really fine sediment that clogs up pipes. The tunnel, with the debris carried by one of the floods, would instantly plug with sediment."

Gaume reported the company has said as much as 44 acre-feet of sediment would go through the tunnel in a big flood year. "That's enough to fill the pipeline system five times over."

He noted the plan was modified at larger cost to take care of the sediment. "In the January report, the cost was estimated at $350 million; by April, to $443 million; and by last September or October to $744 million. That does not include the costs for the Bureau of Reclamation. Water projects do tend to double in cost. Consulting engineers usually low ball the estimates."

He said Bohannon Huston said a small diversion partially across the river would suffice. RJH and Reclamation say it would not, because a dam has to raise a barrier to the flow. "A flooding Gila River will just move over around the partial diversion. The ISC thinks a dam across the river will cause problems with endangered species. I say a partial across the river will not work. Bohannon Huston will do what the ISC tells them to do."

He said BHI says water through the tunnel in an open channel will keep sediment in suspension, but sediment will cause a loss of storage space in Small Spar Canyon, which they would use as a sedimentation system. The suggestion is now to line it, so heavy equipment can get the sediment out. Gaume said this would cause the first phase of the project to have no functionality for storage. "You need storage for huge flows, but Small Spar diverts and nothing else. The ISC is stonewalling the truth and hiding facts. The ISC is trying to get you to buy the pig in a poke."

"The project will yield little to no water at a huge cost," Gaume alleged. "When you figure out how to pay for the water, it will be unfeasible. Reclamation told the ISC to get rid of the fatal flaws, but now they say they will be discovered in the Environmental Impact Study. I've never seen an EIS dealing with fatal flaws. The environmental impacts study will be done and watched with great interest. "

He said he urged the ISC to do a model, which he said could have been done in 2005 based on the Sandia Labs model, but "the ISC said it couldn't do it until a preliminary engineering report was complete, so I did it. I hired two engineers, used a huge Excel spreadsheet to determine what faults it triggered. I had two spreadsheets to work from, the ISC one and The Nature Conservancy one. Three of us built models. We took information from six gauges and the San Carlos Reservoir stage. We prepared formulas. The mean water legally available is 12,000 acre-feet a year."

He showed graphs they developed, which showed the graph with the CUFA diversions, as well as the Gila Gauge minus the CUFA diversion, and another graph with a line designated as the cumulative 140,000 acre-feet of water over 10 years. Using data from 1937-2013 taken at the Gila Gauge about one mile upstream from the confluence of the Gila River with Mogollon Creek, Gaume noted where the line was not flat on the cumulative graph, about 40 percent of the time, no more water could be taken. According to the CUFA, no more than 64,000 acre-feet can be taken in a single year up to the cumulative limit over 10 years. Only three times in the 77 years, had the maximum been triggered-1941, 1983, and 1993.

In two other graphs, he showed the water available and the water amounts that could be taken from most to least. With this graph, Gaume said the project would not provide water in times of drought, a consequence of having the most junior water right on the river. The second graph showed "feast or famine, with the mean AWSA diversion at 12,500 acre-feet a year and the median diversion at 3,500 acre-feet per year. The 38 wettest years would provide 97 percent of total diversion at a median of 19,700 acre-feet a year and the 39 driest years providing 3 percent of total diversion at a median of 108 acre-feet a year.

A final graph showed that a firm yield given in cubic feet per second of 7.5 cfs would equal 5,400 acre-feet per year. The graph text states "the firm yield was obtained with a hydraulic conductivity of 0.00081 feet per day, an order of magnitude lower than the lower hydraulic conductivity values reporter for the Gila Conglomerate with a 5 percent seepage rate."

"The only way for a flashy river like this one," Gaume said, "is you have to store water, but there is no good place to store." He alleged the RJH consulting firm was 'scathing' on the potential for fatal flaws in the BHI report. "The ISC lied to everyone about what it said. The ISC refused to look at seepage. Test wells will show that seepage will be ruinous."

He said that RJH suggested putting in a plastic liner. BHI said 12 inches of clay liner, "which would take 100,000 dump truck loads of clay, and there's no clay around here." Another suggestion, he cited, was 16 inches of natural material, a membrane, more inches of natural material then asphalt to keep the membrane in place.

Gaume alleged the ISC hired RJH to "keep the cat in the bag. We stand by our model."

The rest of his presentation, an ISC presentation and the other agenda items will be covered in a second and final article.

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