On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a motion from Texas and New Mexico to settle a dispute over water rights to the Rio Grande River.
In a 5–4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a lower court judge made errors in his recommendations on how Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado should share water from the 1,900-mile-long Rio Grande River. The Supreme Court determined that the federal government still had unresolved claims regarding New Mexico’s water use, and federal attorneys had objected to the settlement agreement.
Writing for the majority, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stated that the federal government is entitled to be part of the agreement, based on a 1939 accord on how to share the river’s resources.
“We cannot now allow Texas and New Mexico to leave the United States up the river without a paddle. Because the consent decree would dispose of the United States’ Compact claims without its consent,” the justice wrote.
If the states’ “consent decree [is] adopted, the United States would be precluded from claiming what it argues now—that New Mexico’s present degree of groundwater pumping violates the Compact” regarding how the state is carrying out groundwater pumping.
New Mexico officials have