Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present and Future

Without rights, NM’s rivers can come up empty

Season 6 Episode 15 | 5m 32s | Video has closed captioning.

In NM, rivers lack rights to their own waters, which mean that when dry times strike—or people are unwilling to share—rivers run dry. “Water in New Mexico is managed on what's called the priority administration system, it's a system of extraction,” says Paul Tashjian with Audubon Southwest. There are ways to protect rivers that NM can and should explore in coming legislative sessions.