Our Groundwater Future

Join us Thursday, April 26 from 10:30 a.m. to Noon at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science to experience how groundwater is being monitored across the state and to hear how decision makers and collaborators are moving to protect New Mexico’s groundwater future. Keynote speakers will include Senator Mimi Stewart, Senator Howie Morales and Representative Gail Armstrong.

This year in New Mexico, the entire state faces drier than average conditions. We often turn to pumping groundwater to supplement our water needs in times like these, but groundwater is a finite resource, and parts of our state are already facing serious groundwater shortages. As a state, we need more groundwater monitoring in place to track the impacts of drought on our groundwater resources to protect our groundwater for the future.

In response to this, a private and publicly funded effort with the Healy Foundation and the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, now tracks groundwater trends for our state. With a groundwater monitoring station installed at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science (NMMNHS) in Albuquerque, more New Mexicans can get a sense of how groundwater is being monitored across the state. And they can further understand how.

This event at NMMNHS, outdoors in the Kiwanis Learning Garden, will give visitors a firsthand experience of some different ways outreach efforts inform and educate the public on groundwater in New Mexico, and they will also learn how the Museum and the Bureau of Geology are moving to protect groundwater in New Mexico. For example, participation from rural communities is paramount because it provides much needed data that allows us to visualize trends in groundwater across the state. Following these demos, leaders taking the next steps in New Mexico’s groundwater future will deliver brief comments.