A wealthy Italian family plans to pump groundwater out of rural New Mexico to supply 155,000 households in sprawling Albuquerque, 140 miles away. Local ranchers have criticized the plan, fearing that the $600 million project will deplete the ancient aquifer they depend on for their cattle and families.
“The 18,000-acre (7,285-hectare) Augustin Plains Ranch was purchased in the early 1970s by Bruno Modena, an Italian investor. An absentee owner, Modena has leased the land to local cattle ranchers ever since,” says Water Deeply.
According to Michel Jichlinski, project manager for Augustin Plains, “The family became interested in tapping the water resources when the value of water started to skyrocket about a decade ago as a long drought began to grip the Southwest,” says Water Deeply. But ranchers in the area depend on the county’s 11,000-year-old aquifer, which experts say has not recharged in all that time.
“Some of these water wells we’ve had since the 1920s, and some even earlier than that,” said Anita Hand, a cattle rancher whose land borders the Augustin Plains Ranch. “All of a sudden this foreign entity can come in and pump out the water and we’re left with nothing. Without water, our livelihood is done.”
The company claims it will compensate any ranchers who run short of water as a result of the pumping. Augustin Plains has not yet been granted a permit to pipe out the water, but the firm has already taken heat over another project, this one on the coast of Maine, where the family wants to build an eco-resort and golf course on 3,000 acres