The mission of the New Mexico Acequia Association is to sustain our way of life, protect water as a community resource, and strengthen the agricultural traditions of our families and communities. We work to defend acequia water rights so that current and future generations can grow food and can have a healthy and secure source of water for local community needs. An acequia is community-based system of irrigation and water governance and an acequia also refers to the community of farmers that cooperatively maintain the ditch and share water through custom and tradition. Acequias formed the basis for settlement of New Mexico’s Indo-Hispano communities between two and four hundred years ago and continue to be vital to the cultural and economic survival of the traditional communities of New Mexico.
Among acequias, we view water as the lifeblood of our communities because water brings us together as a community and water is essential to the continued survival of our way of life. New Mexico, like other arid states of the Southwest, is faced with unprecedented growth and demands for water. The NMAA was founded to protect the water rights of our communities by strengthening acequia self-governance at the local level and by becoming involved in water and land policy at the local and state levels.
