As floodwaters spill across the state, the Doña Ana Soil and Water Conservation District is leading research on how to better control and mitigate flooding.
A pilot project in the Rincon Arroyo watershed in Southern New Mexico used restoration work to reduce intense peak floodwater flows that cause damage and deposit sediment downstream.
Project leaders say this signposts where water conservation efforts should focus, both in safety and protection of human health and maximizing efficient water capture.
Jennifer Kleitz, district manager for the conservation district and secretary of the South Central New Mexico Stormwater Management Coalition, said mitigating flooding is critical for the state’s future, given current climate trends.
Recent flooding on the Rio Puerco left one dead and displaced several families. Floods have had severe impacts in San Juan County this fall, and in Santa Fe County a woman died after her family tried to cross a flooded arroyo last weekend. Since June, five federal disaster declarations have been issued due to flooding in New Mexico, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Kleitz said this makes attention on capturing stormwater and restoring watersheds even more critical.
“Every part of the state of New Mexico has been affected by these floodings in the last month,” Kleitz told The New Mexican in an interview. “San Juan, Ruidoso, Deming, Mora, they’ve all been affected.”
Kleitz said the ideal method is twofold: Restore the upper watershed tributaries to slow down flows and allow aquifer recharge, and control or capture more floodwater downstream.
“Without the work up above, the water will come more and more intensely due to climate situations,” she said. “It’s fast, it’s furious, it’s bringing a bunch of sediment with it.”
‘Restore the right acres’
The pilot restoration work, led by Connie Maxwell with New Mexico Water Resources Research, launched in 2021. It focused on stabilizing banks by increasing certain vegetation, like drought tolerant grasses, and building small mitigation structures like rock dams and shallow trenches.
Kleitz said the results are significant. Researchers measured peak runoff reductions between 58% and 99% following restoration work in one area. Crews conducted restoration work on just 9% of the Rincon watershed’s 83,000 acres. When they modeled a medium-energy storm scenario, reconnecting specific priority areas in the watershed reduced peak flow by nearly 50%.
“That’s a scenario-specific model result, not a guarantee for every flood, but it points to an important opportunity,” Kleitz said Monday, addressing the state’s interim legislative Water and Natural Resources Committee.
“We don’t have to restore every acre,” she added. “We need to restore the right acres.”
Kleitz said this work was prompted by a weather trend felt across the state: increasingly common flooding with increased intensity. She noted that while the Elephant Butte Irrigation District has been working to capture stormwater for years, the intensity of recent floods is “blowing out” that work.
Photo courtesy Doña Ana Soil and Water Conservation District
Through slowing the flow of stormwater before it reaches the Rio Grande, Kleitz said, ongoing efforts to capture the water further downstream will have a better chance of succeeding.
“Wherever there’s a water control structure, we need to go above it and that’s where the restoration work should begin,” she said.
A model for the rest of the state
Kleitz presented the results of the effort to the Water and Natural Resources Committee in hopes of showcasing how these efforts will benefit the state as it tries to reduce its groundwater depletions and mitigate catastrophic floods.
“This is not just a small little project in the Rincon,” she said. “We’ll develop the model here and it can be applied all over the state.”
Kleitz sat alongside the members of the State Engineer’s Office, the Interstate Stream Commission and the state Environment Department, and asked legislators for support so that this work could be replicated by other soil and water conservation districts.
The initial pilot work was funded through a patchwork of grants, but Klietz said they want their work to continue full speed ahead. Their ideal funding to continue this work would be $3 million in the first year and $20 million for a five-year program that would tackle more pilot work across the Rincon. Some federal dollars already fund this work, with $20 million in federal funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Federation for five flood management projects across Southern New Mexico awarded earlier this year.
State Rep. Rebecca Dow, R-Truth or Consequences, told Kleitz at the hearing she’s interested in exploring a $1 billion fund for these kinds of water projects.
“We’ve done it for behavioral health,” she said. “We’ve done it for early childhood. This isn’t going away. It is a statewide crisis that is not going away. We’re going to continue to spend hundreds of million dollars on recovery until we set aside a billion for prevention.”
State Sen. Pat Woods, R-Broadview, said the state should use funding to support efforts like the Rincon pilot restoration work.
“We can do some things because we’ve got some money coming in right now,” Woods said. “We do not have to spend all our money on social programs. We can actually work on infrastructure.”
Kleitz told The New Mexican she is working with state legislators to develop a bill for the upcoming 2027 legislative session that would continue to fund and expand this work. They plan to debut that at a Legislative Finance Committee meeting in mid-November.
