In the American West, water adjudication lawsuits are adversarial, expensive, and lengthy. Unsettled Waters is the first detailed study of water adjudications in New Mexico. The state envisioned adjudication as a straightforward accounting of water rights as private property. However, adjudication resurfaced tensions and created conflicts among water sovereigns at multiple scales. Based on more than ten years of fieldwork, this book tells a fascinating story of resistance involving communal water cultures, Native rights and cleaved identities, clashing experts, and unintended outcomes. Whether the state can alter adjudications to meet the water demands in the twenty-first century will have serious consequences.

About the Author

Eric P. Perramond is a geographer and holds a joint appointment in the Environmental and Southwest Studies programs at Colorado College. He is the author of Political Ecologies of Cattle Ranching in Northern Mexico.

List of Illustrations, Maps, and Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction. The Cultures of Water Sovereignty in New Mexico

part one. unsettled waters: how water adjudication
works, what it does, and what happens when it fails
1. How Local Waters Become State Water
2. Aamodt, Dammit! Big Trouble in a Small Basin
3. Abeyta: Taos Struggles, Then Negotiates
4. Local Settlements Connect What State Adjudication Severed

part two. the production of water expertise:
the adjudication-industrial complex and its consequences
5. Changing Measures: How Expert Metrics Change Water
6. Working for the Adjudication-Industrial Complex
7. New Water Agents and Actors in Civil Society

part three. adjudicating the unknown future
of new mexico’s water
8. City Water, Native Water, and the Unknown Future
contents Perramond-
9. Beyond Adjudication: Nature’s Share of Water
10. Water Coda, with No End in Sight

Notes
References
Index

Reviews

"Unsettled Waters is an engagingly-written, empirically rich, and helpful new signpost along a throughline of regional literature"
— Water Alternatives

"...historians (and not just geographers and anthropologists) interested in social interactions linking water use, water law, and water policy will find this a satisfying and instructive study. Most importantly, Perramond succeeds in giving a voice to water users who feel that state authorities, engineering experts, and high-priced water lawyers do not understand the cultural dynamics of acequias and small-scale water regimes possessing roots that extend back many generations."
— Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire

"What immediately sets this study apart from all the rest is that here are the voices of individuals whose lives have been inextricably enmeshed in water rights adjudications for decades. . . . This is an outstanding piece of scholarship, and the author has done a highly commendable job of making this complex subject intelligible to the non-specialist."
— Pacific Historical Review

"Unsettled Waters deftly examines the different cultural values of water among Pueblo peoples, Hispanics, and public policy makers. Eric Perramond makes water adjudication a very human process, one that reflects the values, frustrations, and goals of water users and water experts alike. This is a superb and deeply humane piece of scholarship and should be read by everyone interested in Western water issues."—Thomas E. Sheridan, author of Arizona: A History

About the Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

Reviews