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April 2, 2009--Aquifer recharge projects catching on in water-strapped cities (NY Times)

The move toward artificial aquifer recharge signifies a shift in thinking about water supplies in the West. Just a few decades ago, "people thought they were sitting on a huge lake, and that we'd never run out of water," Moore said. Then, after hydrologists found that overpumping was depleting aquifers, water managers began to look to surface waters like the Rio Grande to supplement dwindling resources. The Bear Canyon water comes from the San Juan-Chama Project, which pipes water from the Colorado River Basin across the Continental Divide to the Rio Grande Basin. Moore, a hydrologist with the consulting firm Daniel B. Stephens & Associates, which is overseeing the project for the water utility authority, said flows from the San Juan-Chama project currently provide more water than is needed for immediate use, so the extra water is routed to the aquifer.

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