How Rain Affects Our Drinking Water Supply

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How Rain Affects Our Drinking Water Supply

Most of us anticipate the beautiful snow storms that come this time of year. Despite the challenging driving conditions they cause, the view from Santa Fe of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains covered in snow is a beautiful sight.

This winter thus far we’ve mostly had rain storms accompanied by thick clouds and fog. While these storms have been just as beautiful, there is reason for concern among those who watch the weather and analyze how it affects our drinking-water supply.

In the summer months, rain is a beneficial supplement to, and sometimes even a replacement for, the potable (drinking) water used in most irrigation systems. High Tier 2 water rates encourage many residents to augment their summertime watering with rainwater or gray water to avoid high water costs.

However, in the winter little or no irrigation takes place and so as beautiful as the rain is, it doesn’t do much to supplement the water supply unless you have the capacity to harvest that water and direct it indoors to use for flushing toilets or washing clothes.

Most people forget how important the winter snow pack is to our water supply. The City of Santa Fe obtains its drinking water from four different sources. Groundwater that comes from the city and Buckman well fields provides water from two different aquifers, while surface water from the Rio Grande, including our allotment of the San Juan-Chama Project water, and the Santa Fe River Watershed, which stores runoff in the McClure and Nichols Reservoirs, provides two more sources.

The snowpack that develops in the winter directly impacts runoff in the warmer months to fill the reservoirs and rivers. The more water that is collected in the reservoirs, the less water we have to pump out of the ground to meet our water demands in the summer.

Winter rains can melt the snowpack prematurely, filling the reservoirs too early and then evaporating before the water can be used. As plants are usually dormant during this time of year, the rainwater cannot be utilized by most plants. While some of that moisture may infiltrate the ground, with the potential to recharge the aquifer, most of the rainwater runs down streets and parking lots into storm drains that feed into arroyos and eventually out to the river.

Understanding where our drinking water comes from is an important element in water conservation. Understanding the complexity of our water system can build greater perspective on the behavioral changes required to conserve water in our homes and yards. Though I am an ardent fan of standing in the rain to appreciate its miraculous beauty, I eagerly await the snow storms I know are storing water for our use in the summer months where we need the moisture the most. 
 

Written by Christine Y. Chavez 
Source: Santa Fe, New Mexican

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  1. Water management must be combined with the production of electricity by recycling water in pressurized tanks with compressed air, no large dams and reservoirs. This is not only the cheapest way to produce energy in the world. It is much cheaper even of coal and you can even realize in the apartments and on means of transport, replacing combustion engines. . If we realize this system in the rivers and lakes with the compressed air pressure that is not consumed, using them one way and discharging the water from the overflow, we can defend ourselves even by floods. But whether we realize it in purifiers, in lakes, rivers, wells, recycled water that passes through the pressurized tanks due to the physical laws of Henry and Dalton, absorbs the oxygen contained in the air proportionally, to the tank pressure, therefore, in addition to producing energy at extremely low cost with minimal investment plant, also we clean the water without cost. All these things are fully described in http://www.spawhe.eu website, but the scientific world that is dedicated to water management and energy production, is proving to not understand the basic principles of physics, of hydraulic, chemistry and biology, to encourage floods, droughts, water pollution, fossil energy, and new energies, which are not only bulky and uneconomical, but may not even be interactive positively with environment as it might be compressed hydropower. I say it is useless to post issues on social networks if you do not want to solve the problems globally, in logical way and sustainable, favoring only stupid occult powers of the economy, which remove the in technical and science the pride of working with independent reasoning, which is the only way to arrive at solutions without partisan interests, but in the general interest.