Your Property Just Lost Value

If you own a piece of land and have failed to drill a well for water before now, you might be up a creek without any water (subscription):

A state court this week threw out New Mexicans' longstanding legal right to drill a domestic water well without having to worry about whether it would leave less water for their neighbors.

The ruling is a victory for activists who say that uncontrolled domestic well drilling poses a long-term threat to New Mexico's ability to manage its dwindling water supples. But the details of how the ruling will affect developers who rely on domestic wells to supply the homes they build is unclear, experts said Friday.

The automatic right to a domestic well, Judge J.C. Robinson of the Sixth Judicial District Court in Silver City concluded, conflicts with the historic Western principle, written into the New Mexico constitution, that the first users of water in a region have the highest priority water rights.

What is bizarre about this case is that it is the result of a lawsuit brought against the State Engineers office. Why is that bizarre? Well, the defendant in this case, the State Engineer, was probably thrilled to lose the case:

Gov. Bill Richardson and the state's top water boss will use their administrative powers to limit new domestic wells after the failure of legislation to accomplish the same goal.

"We will do something," said Bill Hume, Richardson's senior policy adviser. "The governor's serious. The question's not if but how."

Something is fishy here. The State Engineer has successfully lost a case that now requires them to limit new domestic wells - something they've been trying to do for years.

Lie, Cheat, Steal - Whatever Works

The Albuquerque Journal has an interesting piece today on New Mexico State Engineer, John D'Antonio (subscription):

When New Mexico's top water official argued in April for a billion-dollar water project to benefit Navajos who have no running water, he cited a public television documentary in support of his argument.

"The reality faced by many Navajo families today and the benefits of the settlement agreement were highlighted in a recent PBS documentary, 'The Water Haulers,' and many New Mexicans were shocked to realize the primitive conditions some of their neighbors are faced with," state engineer John D'Antonio wrote in an April 8 opinion piece published in the Albuquerque Journal.

What D'Antonio didn't say was that his agency helped pay for the documentary.

Ouch! If this was done by corporate America instead of a Richardson appointee, people would be screaming for someone's head to be served on a platter. I mean is anyone actually buying the story D'Antonio's is selling:

D'Antonio said it never occurred to him he should identify his agency's role in the documentary's production when he cited it in his April 8 opinion piece.

"Quite frankly, it didn't even cross my mind," he said in an interview.

D'Antonio said he thought of the documentary as "an educational piece."

"It wasn't a piece of propaganda," he said.

Yeah, like heck it wasn't. The State Engineer's office pays half of the production cost and then uses it to make the case to provide a billion dollar project to the group the financed the other half of the project.

Now, I admit it. I'm not a big fan of Mr. D'Antonio - going back to the days when he decided he could unilaterally create his own "laws" to seize our water rights. But, I guess this just serves to confirm that in the Bill Richardson Administration, anything goes.