![]() The City of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is taking a proactive approach to safeguarding the Santa Fe Municipal watershed, having learned a lesson from the tragedy of the Cerro Grande fire of 2000. Treated water is conveyed to the City of Santa Fe Water Division's customers through the water distribution system. These reservoirs store surface water from the Santa Fe River for delivery to four acequias and for potable water treatment at the Canyon Road Water Treatment Plant. McClure Reservoir is located upstream of Nichols Reservoir. Downstream from the lake, the river picks up additional runoff from the watershed as it travels toward the City of Santa Fe's two man-made, potable water supply reservoirs. The Santa Fe River begins in the upper reaches of the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed at Santa Fe Lake and runs 46 miles to the confluence with the Rio Grande. The Santa Fe Municipal Watershed is closed to the public pursuant to a 1932 order from the Secretary of Agriculture and through an updated Special Prohibition by the Forest Supervisor in 1991. ![]() The Santa Fe Municipal Watershed consists of 17,200 acres within the upper Santa Fe River Watershed and is located in the public lands of the Santa Fe National Forest, part of which is designated as the Pecos Wilderness. The Santa Fe River Watershed is 182,400 acres and is a sub-basin of the Rio Grande Watershed with its headwaters below Lake Peak at 12,408 feet within the Sangre de Cristo range. Watersheds vary in extent from small closed basins that surround our local arroyos up to large watersheds that include major tributaries to large rivers like the Rio Grande. Wherever you are on the land surface of the earth, you are standing within a watershed. A watershed is an area of land in which all the water that falls on that landscape as rain, snow, or any other form of precipitation drains into a common body of water such as a stream, river, or lake.
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