ALBUQUERQUE — If you want to know how Rio Rancho, Santa Fe and other water-poor New Mexico communities keep growing, check the legal ads. Deep in the fine print you’ll see the steady trickle of water rights away from land once covered in alfalfa or chile and into housing developments and businesses miles away.

The heirs of Pedro Sanchez recently advertised to transfer to the city of Rio Rancho the water that once irrigated their grandfather’s fields in Valencia County — enough water every year for 80 or 100 new homes. A group called Promesa del Futuro wants to take nearly 25 million gallons once used for dairy farming near Belen to Santa Fe — another 300 new homes for the City Different. In four separate ads, landowners are selling 13 million gallons of water to Intel Corp.

The demand for water has driven up the value of Middle Rio Grande water rights more than tenfold in the last 20 years, and landowners are cashing out in what appear to be record numbers.

But even as water transfers speed up, so has opposition. Farmers who have long bitten their tongues when a neighbor sells his water rights are starting to speak out. Pueblos that have relied on the Rio Grande for centuries are increasingly vocal in their opposition. In recent months the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has chimed in over concern for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow.

"What’s happening is dangerous," said Janet Jarratt, a longtime Los Lunas-area dairy farmer. "The (state) doesn’t look at the cumulative impact these transfers have," and eventually they will take a tremendous toll on agriculture, society and the Rio Grande itself, she said.

Frank Titus, an Albuquerque hydrogeologist who has studied the river for more than 50 years, thinks of it this way: "We need to decide what it is about New Mexico that we want to protect." He fears that continued transfers will draw down the flow of the once-mighty Rio Grande. That’s not what he wants for the state. "I want there to be a river here."

To the highest bidder

If there’s a typical story behind the sale of water rights in the Middle Rio Grande valley, it might be that of Sophie Fenstermacher. Retired and living in Walnut, Calif., she grew up on the 30-acre farm that her father, Trinidad Romero, owned south of Albuquerque near the village of Tomé. "It was in the family a long, long time," she said.

They raised alfalfa and winter oats, and for a time the family operated a small dairy, Fenstermacher said. As with most family farms, "you work hard, you stay poor."

None of the Romero children stayed in Tomé, but their father kept the farm until he died. His children tried unsuccessfully to get the next generation of Romeros to take it over, but, Fenstermacher said, "They’ve got no interest in farming." She and her siblings sold the farm along with its irrigation rights after their mother died.

"The water rights," she said, "were worth more than the land."

Though the state constitution says New Mexico’s water is owned by the people, the sale of water rights is strictly a private affair. The state, through the Office of the State Engineer (OSE), gets involved only when the new owner wants to transfer the water right somewhere else, that is, to change the point of discharge.

It is almost impossible to pin down the water rights bought and sold annually because of the bookkeeping system employed by the OSE. But it appears to be a booming business from the reports available and from those involved in it.

Bill Turner, whose Albuquerque company WaterBank helps people buy and sell water, said that 20 years ago water rights in the Middle Rio Grande valley sold for about $1,500 per acre-foot. (An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons, which is enough for four or five average American households every year.) By 2007 those same rights were selling for $17,500, he said. At that rate, the water rights alone for Fenstermacher’s family land might have fetched more than $900,000.

But Fenstermacher and her siblings did sell the land and water together, and state records show that the water now belongs to Plaza Investment LLC, Jonathan and Patricia Trujillo and Daniel Trujillo. The owners, who could not be reached for comment, have the rights to 17.5 million gallons a year — enough water to cover an acre of land more than 100 feet deep or to fill 26 Olympic swimming pools.

Or more to the point, it’s enough drinking water for 250 homes per year. Late last year Plaza Investment and the Trujillos applied to transfer all that water to Santa Fe.

Just add water

To build a large residential development these days in Santa Fe, the developer now must bring its own water, said Dale Lyons, the city’s water resources coordinator. The requirement, in place since 2005, ensures that Santa Fe doesn’t exceed the limits imposed by the OSE on how much water it can draw from its own wells.

"We’ve chosen to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘No new demand in Santa Fe,’ " Lyons said. "We knew we would be running out of water if we didn’t do something."

The Plaza Investment transfer doesn’t require Santa Fe to spend any money, Lyons said, but simply authorizes the city to pump Plaza’s 17.5 million gallons out of its Buckman well field.

Sandoval County and many other New Mexico communities have similar restrictions — that developers must purchase water rights before starting work. Also in the market are computer chip-makers, dairies, mining companies and other industries that occasionally need more water. And the quickest way to buy those rights is from farmers. Irrigation accounts for three-fourths of the water use in New Mexico, according to the OSE.

If two farmers were transferring water rights, it would mean just opening the irrigation ditch somewhere else. It probably wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But most transfers these days are far more complicated. In the Plaza Investment transfer, for example, the 17.5 million gallons of Rio Grande water that for decades had been diverted through an irrigation ditch near Los Lunas would instead be drawn from deep wells west of Santa Fe.

In geologic terms it’s the same water, said Jess Ward, who supervises the Middle Rio Grande basin for the OSE. And assuming a transfer meets all the necessary requirements, there’s little doubt it will be approved.

"We’re neutral," Ward said. Whether the water is used for irrigation or drinking, whether it comes from a ditch or a well, he said, "we’re just the regulatory agency to see the state requirements are met."

Those requirements include: whether the water is available; whether the transfer impairs existing rights; and whether the water is being conserved. But another state requirement is increasingly being called into question: Is the transfer in the public welfare?

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation protested the Plaza Investment transfer on those grounds, saying the transfer could affect the Rio Grande stream flow and therefore affect the endangered silvery minnow. Specifically it could require the agency to purchase water to boost the stream flow, "resulting in negative effects on the public welfare."

The Pueblo of Santa Ana also filed a protest of the Plaza transfer. In its letter to the OSE regarding Plaza Investment, Santa Ana says transfers that diminish the surface flow of the Rio Grande "are a cumulative threat" to other irrigators and to the ecological integrity of the river and "detrimental to the public welfare."

In June the Pueblo of Isleta protested the transfer of water from Valencia County to Santa Fe’s Buckman well field, as it had for four other transfers by the same group of applicants.

Isleta representatives did not return calls seeking comment, but Nancy Cunningham Rodriguez, a water resources supervisor for the OSE in Albuquerque, said the pueblos are among a growing number of groups opposing water transfers in the Middle Rio Grande valley and elsewhere in the state.

"There are a lot more protests now than 15 years ago," she said. While the OSE is limited to considering water transfers on a broad, almost geological scale, protesters are zooming in on the details, she said. "People are more aware of the issues now."

Over the dam

The Rio Grande may be one of the most highly regulated rivers in the world. Its natural flow is dammed, supplemented with water from other rivers and divvied up among dozens of competing — and at times conflicting — interests. Rafters want high flows while fly-fishermen want it calm. Farmers to the south may be clamoring for irrigation water as monsoon rains hit the north. Developers want water for homes and golf courses while scientists warn of impending drought. Interstate and international compacts require the state to ensure the Rio Grande keeps running at specified levels.

Meantime the OSE keeps approving water right transfers out of the Middle Rio Grande valley, and many are worried about the potential for long-term impacts. The loss of irrigation water is one of several issues that has the Bureau of Reclamation concerned, said Lisa Croft, the agency’s deputy area manager in Albuquerque.

The increasing transfers come at a time when the river will start seeing a major reduction in flow. Since 1970, water has been diverted into the Rio Grande from southern Colorado. The San Juan-Chama Project, which adds 110,000 acre-feet per year, on average, to the Rio Grande, is meant to be used mainly for municipal water. Albuquerque starts using its share in early 2009; Santa Fe begins using the water in 2011. In the meantime the water has been flowing downstream.

Croft and others worry that as the cities start using their San Juan-Chama water, stretches of river downstream could run short, affecting everything from silvery minnows to alfalfa fields. The problems could be exacerbated by climate change, which in the long term forecasts less water for the southwestern United States.

"We’re definitely concerned," Croft said. The agency has started rewriting the Biological Opinion — the document that guides the recovery effort for the silvery minnow — because so much change faces the Middle Rio Grande, as well as because much has been learned about the endangered species since it was listed in 1994.

But water rights transfers are a critical issue, she said. "When you’re moving water rights from the lower river to the upper, or from (river) basin to basin, or from surface to ground, these are all things we feel are at a critical point where the bureau has to start talking about it," Croft said. "When do a bunch of little impacts become a big impact?"

The protest against the Plaza Investment transfer was the bureau’s first, she said, but it may not be its last. "We’re going to be protesting water rights transfers, along with the pueblos, as we see fit," she said.

Disappearing act?

Farmers like Janet Jarratt say the loss of water rights from the Middle Rio Grande valley is a loss for the state and perhaps even the Earth.

"The Middle Rio Grande was kind of like a breadbasket" when agriculture was at its peak years ago, she said. Farmers raised fruits, vegetables and grain. For a period there were 32 dairies in Valencia County alone. It was a long, green swath down the middle of the state, providing food and tranquility.

"As you start having water rights transfers," Jarratt said, "it isn’t just about water rights. It’s the land that goes with it." Without irrigated farm land, the region loses the potential to have locally grown food — all the rage these days. Some have also talked about selling carbon credits based on Rio Grande valley farmland, because it can absorb carbon dioxide, she said.

Fellow farmer Lisa Roberts, who has acreage near Tomé, said she fears even more agricultural water rights will be sold in the future as farmers feel economic pressure. "If they’re in a bind, that’s their only option."

The problem, she said, is that even if the water rights were sold off every acre in the Middle Rio Grande valley, it wouldn’t meet the built-up demand of the current population, much less allow for future development.

The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, which was formed to build and manage irrigation ditches in the region nearly a century ago, is watching the migration of agricultural water rights with great concern, said spokesman Dennis Domrzalski. "It’s a huge deal, and getting bigger," he said.

But it’s hard to be optimistic about the future, given the strong demand for water for development and the gradual decline of the farm economy, Domrzalski said. "As this all settles out, agriculture tends to lose."