ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – It’s no secret water can be a fickle resource in New Mexico. Ask any farmer, and they’ll tell you there are good years and bad years.

Water managers at the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District are forecasting an especially dry year for the Rio Grande, largely because there just wasn’t a hefty snowpack to feed the river.

The April forecast for the middle valley – where Albuquerque is — is 27% of the median flow, one of the worst we’ve seen in recent years.

“The river is going to look and feel a lot lighter than it’s been,” said Jason Casuga, CEO & chief engineer of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. “And so what it means is it’s quite possibly the Middle Valley we could see drying through Albuquerque. The farmers and irrigators are going to struggle until we get into monsoon season. This is a really, really bad hydrology year, and it highlights the importance of storing water for these bad years.” 

Water managers say this year will be pretty similar to 2018 except they don’t have any stored water to release back into the river because the El Vado Reservoir Project is still under construction.

State leaders know this is not a one-and-done issue. They released a 50-year water action plan in 2024 to get ahead of a predicted 25% reduction in the state’s freshwater supplies, and they’re putting that plan to work.

The governor signed four water-focused bills into law Tuesday, including a new framework for a strategic water supply. That’s the plan to pump dirty, brackish water out of the ground, clean up it, and then sell it for industrial uses to preserve New Mexico’s fresh water supplies.

“States who continue to wait, who don’t deal with their water shortages in what can be a future water supply in any number of ways, miss out on building the economy,” said Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. 

The governor also signed bills cracking down on PFAS chemicals, otherwise known as forever chemicals. There’s one phasing out the toxic chemicals from consumer products in New Mexico, and another giving the state’s Environment Department sharper teeth in PFAS cleanup efforts at New Mexico’s military bases.

“It’s so important that we become aggressive on contamination, and we try to stop it before it happens in the first place,” said state Sen. Jeff Steinborn. 

The governor also signed a bill Tuesday, giving the state control over what’s dumped into New Mexico’s streams and tributaries. That’s after a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision removed the federal protections covering more than 90% of New Mexico’s waterways.

All of those bills are directly connected to the state’s 50-year water action plan, and we’re expecting even more water conversations in 2026.