The Tecolotito Acequia held its annual meeting last week and the parciantes (members) approved the new By-Laws and re-elected its officers by acclamation. I'll be the Mayordomo again this year.
Together with the Ranchitos Acequia Mayordomo, downstream, I turned off the water to begin drying out the ditchbed for the annual cleaning in February. There is great concern amongst the farmers to get this routine turn-around accomplished quickly this year as there isn't much snow up in the high country and the irrigation season bodes to be short and early.
Because we got a lot of work done last year in catching up on neglected maintenance, we'll focus on the first 1/2 mile of ditchbed that wasn't done last year. This year we have the ideal tool for that crucial job, a small "track-hoe" on crawler tracks that can move in the mud without being bogged down. A near-by non-parciante owns this machine and we are working out some kind of deal to pay for its use.
Our goal is to get the water moving again by March 1, a month earlier than last year (and normal operations) and get more of the run-off while it is there. Temperatures here this January have been high, with many nights not even freezing. Warm temps mean earlier run-off of whatever snowpack has occurred. We could get more winter, and more snowpack, but it looks increasingly un-likely.
Except for a couple of episodes of storm run-off, the Pecos River hasn't flowed strong enough to adequately fill both the east-side and the west-side acequias since the year before last.
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