Ground-water resources of the middle Rio Grande basin, New Mexico

Abstract

The Middle Rio Grande Basin covers approximately 3,060 square miles in central New Mexico, encompassing parts of Santa Fe, Sandoval, Bernalillo, Valencia, Socorro, Torrance, and Cibola Counties. In this report, “Middle Rio Grande Basin” refers to the geologic basin defined by the extent of deposits of Cenozoic age along the Rio Grande from about Cochiti Dam to about San Acacia. In 2000, the population of the Middle Rio Grande Basin was about 690,000, or about 38 percent of the population of New Mexico (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001a, 2001b). In 1995, the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer declared the Middle Rio Grande Basin a “critical basin”; that is, a ground-water basin faced with rapid economic and population growth for which there is less than adequate technical information about the available water supply. Though the basin had been intensively studied for a number of years, important gaps remained in the understanding of the water resources of the basin. In an effort to fill some of these gaps, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other Federal, State, and local agencies began the Middle Rio Grande Basin Study, a 6-year effort to improve the understanding of the hydrology, geology, and land-surface characteristics of the basin.