Santa Fe County Water Report

Santa Fe County's water systems carry a failing grade, scoring 22.7 out of 100. Over the past five years, EPA SDWIS records 132 health-based violations — a pattern that public water utilities are required to disclose and correct.

Under the Clean Water Act §303(d), EPA ATTAINS tracks whether waterways meet quality standards for drinking, recreation, and aquatic life (reporting cycle: 2022). A notable 20.5% of assessed waterways carry an impairment designation (43 of 210 water bodies) across Santa Fe County's watersheds. The leading impairment causes are polychlorinated biphenyls (pcbs) and aluminum, total. Impairment does not mean tap water is unsafe — it measures ambient waterway conditions upstream of treatment, not finished drinking water.

USGS NWIS gauge data (as of 2026-05-14T13:00:00.000-06:00) puts RIO GRANDE at 263.0 cfs — well below its long-term average at 19% of mean — low-flow conditions worth noting for water-dependent ecosystems. Streamflow is a leading indicator of drought stress, sediment load, and dilution capacity: low flows concentrate pollutants and warm water temperatures, stressing aquatic life and, in surface-water-dependent systems, the source water quality for treatment plants.

EPA's Water Quality Portal (WQP) aggregates monitoring data from federal, state, and tribal agencies. Santa Fe County has extensive coverage with 52 active monitoring sites with 13,131 recent measurements on record. Predominant monitoring categories include physical and inorganics, minor, metals. More monitoring sites generally indicate greater scientific attention to local water conditions — and provide the baseline data that regulators use to set future impairment listings.