DELICATE WATER ZONE · D4 — Exceptional drought over a member dam
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque's river water is imported: the San Juan-Chama Project tunnels Colorado-basin snowmelt under the divide into Heron, and the water authority blends it with the aquifer it spent a century overdrafting. When the Project allocation falls short, the city leans back on the aquifer it is trying to rest — and El Vado, the valley's native storage, has spent recent years under dam rehabilitation.
What this desk cannot see: The aquifer half of the city's supply has no single open real-time index this desk can verify; the river half is what these pools show.
The reservoirs this zone drinks from
| Reservoir | % full | Storage | Elevation | 30-day trend | Drought at the dam |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abiquiu Reservoir NM | — | no reading | 6,199.3 ft | +0.01 ft/day | D4 — Exceptional drought |
| El Vado Lake NM | 9.5% | 17,613 af | 6,811.6 ft | -111 af/day | D4 — Exceptional drought |
| Heron Reservoir NM | 8.1% | 32,515 af | 7,070.0 ft | -320 af/day | D4 — Exceptional drought |
af = acre-feet; a dash means the measure is not published for that reservoir. Each name links to the reservoir's full page — gauge, record, snowpack and sources.
Upstream watch
Pools that feed this zone's members without serving the city directly.
- Navajo Reservoir — 47.2% full
Zone prose is curated by this desk with its sourcing inline; the numbers are the member reservoirs' own operators', on the bases named on each reservoir's page. Back to the national desk.