Albuquerque will start drinking from the Rio Grande next year as part of the San Juan-Chama drinking water project, but the actual water supply, piped in from the Colorado River basin, has been flowing past the city for decades. By timing the release of water from El Vado Reservoir just right, the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority and its partner federal agencies can make an especially scenic portion of the Chama River raftable, to the delight of outfitters and outdoor enthusiasts alike. Normally running about 100 cubic feet per second (a basketball is about a cubic foot), the river would jump to 600 cubic feet per second on the weekends this summer. Without that pulse, rafting couldn't happen.The arrangement with the rafters should be able to continue, but doling out water to minnows and farmers will become a thing of the past. The impact of that is hard to predict, since it depends on the severity of future droughts.

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