START – All Our Water Used to Come from Wells

Albuquerque’s Water Supply

In Albuquerque we used to get all our water from wells. We pumped the water up from our aquifer. An aquifer is a layer of dirt and rocks that holds water. Our aquifer is not like a lake you can swim in. You cannot row a boat or scuba dive there. In our aquifer water surrounds the dirt and rocks, like it does in mud.

We used to think that there was more water in our aquifer than we could ever use. Now we know that our aquifer is much smaller than we thought. [See diagrams to the right.] We knew we would need to start using less water. We also needed more water.

We cannot use Rio Grande water because farmers need it to grow crops. But there was some water in the Rio Grande that we could use. Where did it come from? Click the square blue button below to go to Step 1 of our Water System Tour.