Rewriting the Rules
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2023
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The city of Albuquerque exists in part because of the Azotea Tunnel, a massive infrastructure project that effectively rerouted part of the Colorado River into the Rio Grande. The project helped sustain Albuquerque’s rapid population growth. Meanwhile, some communities lost out. Water that would have flowed through the Jicarilla Apache Nation was instead diverted via the tunnel.
In this episode, we travel 180 miles north of Albuquerque to the town of Dulce to talk to Daryl Vigil, retired longtime water administrator, about how the tribe is fighting for a seat at the table in ongoing Colorado River management. And we visit To’Hajiilee, a community dealing with water insecurity that stands to benefit from leasing Jicarilla settlement water.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Rio Grande is a wide band of muddy brown water that bisects the city of Albuquerque |
| 0:05.5 | before making its way to the Gulf of Mexico. I like to walk my dog there sometimes on the |
| 0:10.8 | Bosque trails that run alongside it. Ellie, you want to go see the river? It's a chilly morning |
| 0:16.8 | in October. We're not far from a busy road, but it's pretty peaceful out here. |
| 0:22.6 | You see the ducks? Or I guess it was peaceful until we showed up. |
| 0:26.4 | Okay, I take off my shoes and Sally and I wade into the water that makes our city possible. |
| 0:34.8 | I guess I knew that a lot of Albuquerque's water supply came from the Colorado, but never really |
| 0:41.9 | thought about how. We're standing in the Rio Grande, a couple hundred miles from the nearest |
| 0:47.9 | Colorado tributary, but some of the water we're standing in comes from the Colorado River system. |
| 0:54.8 | This is our drinking water supply and we only have it because we stole it from somebody else. |
| 1:02.8 | So how did Colorado River water get here to Albuquerque? The answer lies about 180 miles to the north |
| 1:10.4 | on the Hickorya Apache Nation. Hazotaya Tunnel Outlet. Isn't that pretty wild? That's the voice |
| 1:18.8 | of Daryl V Hill, a big deal in the world of tribal water policy. Back in July, he showed me all |
| 1:26.4 | around Hickorya Country. We probably put a hundred miles on his blue pickup that day. Sorry, Daryl. |
| 1:33.3 | Starting here on the eastern edge of the reservation, where something called the Hazotaya Tunnel |
| 1:38.8 | lets out. How much of this is coming from the Colorado? All of it. Every single 90,000 acres |
| 1:47.2 | being taken out of the Colorado system and being put into the Rio Grande system, |
| 1:51.6 | that it wasn't for Colorado River water, the Rio Grande would be dry certain times of the year |
| 1:58.5 | and certain locations. Back in the 1960s, when Albuquerque's population was growing and the Rio |
| 2:05.6 | Grande was starting to look over taxed, President John F. Kennedy signed off on this plan to throw |
| 2:12.1 | Colorado River water at the problem. The federal government paid to dam up three of its tributaries |
| 2:18.4 | in southern Colorado and build this massive concrete tunnel. And so my father as a teenager |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.