Urbanization and the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District

Abstract

A shift from irrigation agriculture to urban landuses is affecting physical and social aspects of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. An evolutionary perspective and an examination of special districts provide a framework for understanding the significance of changes occurring in the district. The district was intended to have three benefits: flood control, supply of irrigation water, and drainage. The latter two have been profoundly affected by the shift to urbanization. QPECIAL districts have been created in many areas of the West to provide LI water-related services such as irrigation, food control, drainage, or a combination of purposes. Many districts that originally served rural populations have been progressively urbanized. The process of urbanization affects the social and physical environments of a district. The purpose of this study is to examine how change from rural to urban landuses has influenced and continues to affect the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD) in New Mexico. The text is organized in three parts. The first is a historical examination of the creation of the MRGCD; the second is a discussion of characteristics of special governmental districts to establish a base for evaluating changes in the district; the third is an examination of the process of urbanization and its direct and indirect influences on certain social and physical aspects of the district. The middle section of the Rio Grande drainage basin is the focus of this study-specifically the portion served by the MRGCD.1 It extends 240 kilometers south from Cochiti Dam to the northern boundary of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and varies from two to eight kilometers in width (Fig. 1). The district encompasses 112,463 hectares, including 11,540 hectares of Indian lands. Of the total area, 52,145 hectares are considered potentially irrigable, although only 35,200 hectares, or approximately 68 percent of the total, are currently irrigated. On the bases of archaeological evidence, observations from early Spanish explorers, and certain assumptions about the ratio of Indian population to irrigated land, it has been estimated that 10,000 to 12,000 hectares were irrigated in 1539 when the Spanish explorer Antonio de Espejo entered the region.2 Spanish settlers brought with them during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a social structure for hydraulic community organization.3 I National Resources Committee, Regional Planning, Part VI: The Rio Grande Joint Investigation in the Upper Rio Grande Basin in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1938). 2Joseph L. Burkeholder, Report of the-Chief of Engineers: Vol. 1, Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, Albuquerque, N.M., 1928. 3Arthur Maass and Raymond L. Anderson, ... And the Desert Shall Rejoice: Conflict, Growth, and Justice in Arid Environments (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978). * DR. THOMPSON is an assistant professor of geography at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.144 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 06:43:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 36 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW