- Reclamation
- Upper Colorado Basin
- Albuquerque Area Office
Albuquerque Area Office
The Albuquerque Area Office is one of the largest in Reclamation reaching from the Alamosa area of southern Colorado through most of New Mexico and into west Texas. Staff here manage delivery of water on the Rio Grande, Rio Chama, Pecos, and Canadian rivers from the main office in Albuquerque and six field offices in Alamosa, Colorado; Alamogordo, Chama, Elephant Butte, and Socorro, New Mexico; and El Paso, Texas. This office is also responsible for overseeing the management of nine major dams with a combined reservoir storage capacity of more than 3.5 million acre-feet that supply water for more than 439,000 acres of irrigated land and several municipal drinking water projects. They also oversee hydropower production at Elephant Butte Dam, and research and testing at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination and Research Facility.
News and Highlights
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News Release – April 16, 2026
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Water managers on the Rio Grande in New Mexico are bracing for drought conditions created by the earliest snowmelt on record, one of the lowest snowpacks on record and already low reservoir storage. The Bureau of Reclamation’s annual operating plans for the Rio Grande and Pecos River reflect the poor hydrology. Read More »

Consecutive years of extreme drought and earliest snowmelt on record create challenges on the Rio Grande