ALBUQUERQUE – With the growing season approaching and the drought continuing to bear down on New Mexico, one of the state’s major irrigation districts said Monday it is getting ready to prime its canals.
Derrick Lente, chairman of the district’s board of directors, said the district is expecting to have more water than it did last year at this time, and it should be enough to get farmers through spring and early summer.
“We’re going to do our best to stretch the season the entire way,” Lente said. “If we manage it the right way, we can do it. But the wild card is Mother Nature, and there’s nothing we can do about that.”
The state’s irrigation districts depend heavily on snowpack in the northern mountains and runoff captured during monsoon season. But the state has been struggling through consecutive years of severe drought, and this winter has been one of the driest on record in New Mexico.
