Water Matters!

Utton Transboundary Resources Center
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The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Water Matters! podcast looks at water and natural resources issues in New Mexico and beyond. Housed at the University of New Mexico School of Law, the Utton Transboundary Resources Center is a state-funded research and public service project that believes in the pursuit of well informed, collaborative solutions to our natural resource challenges. The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Sairis Perez-Gomez designed the podcast logo and wrote and performed our theme music and Student Research Assistant Francesca Glaspell produced this episode. Rin Tara is a staff attorney specializing in water policy and governance at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center. They are primarily interested in questions of water management in the face of climate change. They have done work in riparian restoration, river connectivity, tribal water sovereignty, climate change adaptation, and water rights. They have authored several papers on topics related to the future of western water management.   John Fleck is Writer in Residence at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico School of Law; and Professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance in the University of New Mexico Department of Economics. The former director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program, he is the author of four books on water in the west, including the forthcoming history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande – Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City. 

  1. 13h ago

    17: Understanding the History Behind How We Manage the Colorado River

    Guest: Eric Kuhn   “We need to understand the history.” -              Eric Kuhn   This week Rin Tara and John Fleck are joined on Water Matters by their longtime friend and collaborator Eric Kuhn, arguably the preeminent historian of the intersection between Colorado River hydrology and the evolution of the institutions developed to manage it. Their subject is the arcane but now critically important issues of the Colorado River Basin’s “Upper Basin Initial Units,” a quartet of reservoir complexes on the Green, the Gunnison, the San Juan, and the main stem of the Colorado River. Approved by Congress in the 1950s and completed in the 1960s and ‘70s, the reservoirs have become a critical tool in managing 21st century shortages on the Colorado as water users and the federal government struggle to figure out how to share a shrinking river. For background, some of the work Kuhn, Tara, and Fleck have published over the years on the underlying issues: Kuhn, Eric, Katherine H. Tara, and John Fleck. "Unfinished Business: Twenty-First Century Questions Posed by Ambiguities in the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact and the Law of the River." NML Rev. 55 (2025): 417Kuhn, Eric, Katherine H. Tara, and John Fleck. "A Horse Named “Stream Depletion Theory”: The History and Negotiation of the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact." Natural Resources Journal 65, no. 1 (2025): 69-122.Kuhn, Eric, and John Fleck. Science be dammed: How ignoring inconvenient science drained the Colorado River. University of Arizona Press, 2019.The work of “The Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River,” a group of scholars and former water managers including Tara, Kuhn, and occasionally Fleck who write on the current Colorado River situation.

  2. Sep 9

    Water Update (09/09/26)

    A River (Ever So Briefly) Returns This week’s water update is a special edition as Rin Tara and John Fleck take you out to the Rio Grand in Central Albuquerque to experience the brief return of the Rio Grande to a river bed that has been dry for most of the summer. Rin and John were there, tape recorder in hand, on Thursday (Sept. 3, 2026) at midday as a pulse of water provided by the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, and Audubon Southwest crept slowly beneath the I40 bridge near Old Town. They could see the pulse shrinking as it moved downstream, which was the expected result – really the whole point of the exercise – as it soaked into the shallow aquifer that feeds the riverside bosque. Scientists are now monitoring vegetation response and changes in the groundwater levels beneath the bosque, to better understand how the system performs for future environmental management. More information:  John’s blog post with the final flow data from the US Geological Survey gages along the river An explanation from Paul Tashjian at Audubon Southwest about how the pulse came together Bryce Dix at KUNM explains the pulse flow

  3. Aug 26

    Water Update (08/26/26)

    A Search for Silver Linings The water numbers remain grim in this week’s Water Update, with 97 miles of drying in the New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande, which is not a record large number only because it rained enough to drop this week’s number beneath last week’s 100 miles of drying. But Rin Tara and John Fleck soldier on, searching for signs of hope in an otherwise grim water situation: Money for Albuquerque’s aquifer storage and recovery projectTortugas Dam rehabilitation project New Mexico Water Planning guidelinesProject Jupiter groundwater pumping rulingNevada sues federal government over Colorado River planTarantula migration

  4. Aug 21

    16: Discussing the Post-2026 FEIS with the Wilburys vol. I

    Guests: Kathryn Sorensen and Jack Schmidt This week Rin Tara and John Fleck are joined by friends and colleagues Kathryn Sorensen and Jack Schmidt – members of the group that journalist Allen Best dubbed The Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River – to talk about the future of management of the Colorado River. Tara, Fleck, Sorensen, and Schmidt – along with fellow Wilburys Anne Castle and Eric Kuhn – have been collaborating for a number of years on analysis and recommendations for Colorado River management as reservoir levels drop toward record lows. In this episode, they lay out the details of the federal government’s newest analysis of future management options as the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico copes with the dramatic impact of aridification – drought made worse by climate change. Further information: Department of Interior Final Environmental Impact Statement on future operations of the Colorado River Lake Powell and Lake Mead reach record lowsThe most recent Wilburys report: Colorado River Basin Storage Continues Slide Toward System Crash

  5. Aug 12

    Water Update (08/12/2026)

    A Dry Year Gets Drier This week Rin Tara and John Fleck do their best to find hope, but in a year this dry it takes more work. Note that at the time of posting this episode, the Frijoles Fire has grown to 7,794 acres.  Via John and Utah State’s Jack Schmidt, Lake Mead and Lake Powell continue their decline toward the lowest levels since the reservoirs were first built in the 1930s (Mead) and 1960s (Powell).The latest forecast for the coming Super El Niño: lots of winter precipitation for California and Arizona, meh for the Upper Colorado and Upper Rio Grande basinsThe greening of the bosque downstream of Albuquerque’s wastewater treatment plant, via the Aug. 8, 2026 overflight of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellite

  6. Jul 29

    Water Update (07/29/26)

    It rained! On this week’s water update, Rin Tara and John Fleck talk about the joy of a summer rainstorm, as Albuquerque was drenched by a monsoon storm Friday, July 24*, wetting the Rio Grande and providing a burst of flow in otherwise dry valley irrigation ditches. *The storm we are talking about occurred on 7/24, but the Middle Rio Grande got another storm yesterday (7/28) that also dropped some moisture. In other news: El Niño is strengtheningDoña Ana County uranium drinking water contaminationHarmful algal bloomsNew Mexico ISC draft water planning guidelines surveyStationarity is Dead (the classic Science paper on how, in water management, climate change changes everything)Ribbons of Green, (John’s book)

  7. Jul 17

    15: John Fleck on Tending the Middle Rio Grande Garden

    In this week’s Water Matters, John Fleck switches from the host’s chair to the guest’s chair (it’s really the same chair) as co-host Rin Tara sits down with him to talk about the new book he and Bob Berrens wrote, Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of Modern Albuquerque. From Voltaire’s Candide to the myth of a lost Garden of Eden on the Rio Grande Valley floor, Rin and John talk about how the effort to manage a river shaped the modern garden Albuquerque has become, and what lessons the process might have for the challenges our community faces in a climate changed world.

  8. Jul 9

    Water Update (07/09/26)

    Lots of news on this week’s Water Matters. Kelsey Fendler rows the Pacific (paywalled)Mark Olalde, Alex Hager, and Sharon Chischilly on the Northeastern Arizona water settlementAlgal blooms at Clayton Lake, but also dinosaur tracks!   Santa Clara raises its water ratesHigh tech fire detection in Albuquerque’s bosqueRoswell water quality reportHeather  Sackett on Colorado West Slope lawmakers breaking from their state’s tough stance on Colorado River negotiationsNew Mexico gets a new Colorado River negotiatorInciweb for the latest fire updates

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Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Water Matters! podcast looks at water and natural resources issues in New Mexico and beyond. Housed at the University of New Mexico School of Law, the Utton Transboundary Resources Center is a state-funded research and public service project that believes in the pursuit of well informed, collaborative solutions to our natural resource challenges. The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Sairis Perez-Gomez designed the podcast logo and wrote and performed our theme music and Student Research Assistant Francesca Glaspell produced this episode. Rin Tara is a staff attorney specializing in water policy and governance at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center. They are primarily interested in questions of water management in the face of climate change. They have done work in riparian restoration, river connectivity, tribal water sovereignty, climate change adaptation, and water rights. They have authored several papers on topics related to the future of western water management.   John Fleck is Writer in Residence at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico School of Law; and Professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance in the University of New Mexico Department of Economics. The former director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program, he is the author of four books on water in the west, including the forthcoming history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande – Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City. 

Information

  • Creator
    Utton Transboundary Resources Center
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    38
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Water Matters!
  • Show Website
    Water Matters!

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