Roque Tudesqui House - Historic Santa Fe Foundation

Later the Justice ofthe Peace was prohibited from issuing orders
against the Santa Fe Water and Improvement Company by an Absolute
Writ of Prohibition issued by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of
New Mexico in 1886. This may have been the first indication that the
water plan, if any, had not taken into consideration the existing water
rights of downstream users.
Stone Dam was replaced by Two Mile Dam in 1894. Less water
left for the acequias. Granite Point Dam was completed in 1926. It left
even less water for the acequias. Nichols Dam built in 1943 reduced the
flow of water to a trickle, often in the spring.
In 1947, Granite Dam was renamed McClure Dan and the total
storage capacity for all three dams was raised to 4,121 acre feet, an
increase of over 250 percent. With this large addition to the storage capacity
of the water company, the year round flow of the river was essentially
stopped. There was no provision for keeping at least a minimum
flow in the river for duwnstream users with prior rights. There is little or no
record of public input on any of the dams that have been built on the Santa
Fe River except through legal action, and this was generally after the fact.
In the years between 1948 and 1990, numerous calls were made
on the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) and later to the
Sangre de Cristo Water Company, to release water to the Acequia Madre,
but to no avail. PNM held the position that they had acquired all Santa Fe
acequia water rights under their permit from the State Engineer.
In 1975, the Santa Fe District Court issued an order directing the
State Engineer to make a hydrographic survey of all claims to the use of
waters of the Santa Fe River stream system. This action is commonly
known as Anaya vs. PNM. This study is the basis of the Santa Fe River
adjudication which is still ongoing. Offers of judgment were made to over
20 ofthe remaining users on the Acequia Madre. PNM still refused to
recognize those rights and would not release water. This is when having
already learned about persistence, the acequia would now start teaching
us about litigation.
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