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Show PUEBLO WATER RIGHTS IN NEW MEXICO 171 The Albuquerque case, decided in 1963, concerned chiefly questions pertaining to appropriation of ground water, in connection with which the interrelationships of surface and ground waters as declared in previous decisions were recognized. However, pueblo rights questions were injected into the controversy by the plaintiff City of Albuquerque and the district court, and were rejected by the New Mexico Supreme Court. Specifically, the findings of fact and conclusions of law of the district court regarding the original pueblo at Albuquerque and the city's claimed pueblo right were ordered stricken by the supreme court as not being within the issues properly before the court. Thus, following the original Cartwright case in 1958, the New Mexico Supreme Court rendered decisions respecting pueblo rights in 1961 and 1963. But nothing decided in the Cartwright case has been changed-whether by repudiation, restriction, or enlargement.98 98 In a 1962 article on New Mexico water law it was stated that the early colonization grants did not contemplate ground water uses, and that although the Cartwright decision involved surface waters, the court made no distinction between its application to surface or ground waters in adopting the California doctrine which includes both. Further, application of the pueblo rights theory of the Cartwright case in the Albuquerque case would have allowed the City of Albuquerque to drill for and to pump large quantities of water from storage, regardless of the effect that this would have on the regimen of the Rio Grande, all the surface waters of which are appropriated. It was also stated that the applicable interstate compacts made no mention of ground waters, and that the effects of recognition of a pueblo right along the Rio Grande on interstate relations and project developments, and on plans for the Upper Colorado Basin and the San Juan-Chama development, are obviously far reaching. Clark, supra note 90, at 485-486, 528, 557-559. See note 97 supra, regarding the only reference to ground water in the Cartwright case. |