Jobs, not water, were on everyone’s mind last year when Intel Corp., the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer, broke ground to expand its plant in this suburb of Albuquerque.
The planned $1.8 billion expansion, which would add 2,400 names to the plant’s 2,800-person payroll, was praised by local officials as the kind of growth that has kept the nation’s Sun Belt booming over the last several decades.
Then came a catch. A U.S. Geological Survey report revealed that New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley had less groundwater than previously thought. Suddenly approval of Intel’s request for additional water no longer was a sure thing.
Homeowners formally protested the company’s application to state officials for three new wells, and pickets tried to disrupt Intel’s annual stockholder meeting in Albuquerque.
Intel received its official pump permit in July, but its experience is one that other executives may face as competition for existing water in the Sun Belt grows.
“It’s been an awakening for this company, just like it’s been an awakening for most people in Albuquerque,” said Bill Sheppard, manager of Intel’s 14-year-old Rio Rancho plant.
Few places would turn away a big firm like Intel, but the case led New Mexico officials to review how water use should be prioritized in a primarily agricultural state seeking to attract industry and recreational development.
“The Intel application raised a debate about what’s good for the state,” said State Engineer Eluid Martinez, New Mexico’s top water czar. “It was a lot of water, but not more than would be used to irrigate 2,000 acres of farmland. Drying up a golf course or two would make that water available.”
With few rivers and lakes in the state, nine out of 10 residents receive their water from ground wells. The state has yet to develop the means for fully using its rights to a small amount of Colorado River basin water from the San Juan River, a Colorado tributary that runs through the state’s northwest corner.
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New Mexico isn’t as worried about future shortfalls as California and Nevada, but Albuquerque officials recently withdrew their request to pump more groundwater, trying instead to get serious about conservation. The area’s rapid growth-it now is home to more than 600,000 people-contributed to the significant lowering of groundwater levels, according to the geological survey.
Martinez predicted that burgeoning populations along the U.S.-Mexico border, such as the El Paso-Juarez region, soon would put further strain on the Southwest’s scarce water.
In granting Intel’s permit, he ordered the company to undertake conservation efforts and monitor nearby water levels to make sure homeowners’ wells in the adjacent village of Corrales do not dry up.
A riverside enclave of stables, vineyards and farms where a wave of newly arrived professionals are restoring old adobe homes, Corrales still fears that the Intel expansion that has contributed to its clogged roads also will take its water.
“Just a few feet of draw-down would put a lot of people’s wells out of business,” said village board member Lawrence Vigil.
Intel officials said the plant expansion will allow them to produce the company’s new generation Pentium chips (water is used to rinse the chips and keep them free of contaminants during the production process). The new permit would increase the plant’s water use from 3 million to almost 5 million gallons a day.
Sheppard said locating the water-intensive industry in a desert climate never had been an issue before.
Now the company, criticized for starting its Rio Rancho expansion before filing its water application, has begun efforts to reduce its water use by half and apply the lessons learned in New Mexico to its new plant in Ocotillo, Ariz.