City needs to hop to it on river-water plan, Albuquerque panel says.

Byline: John Hill TRIBUNE REPORTER

Albuquerque must make drastic changes in the way it gets water to avoid sucking the underground supply dry, an advisory committee to City Hall says.

The city should move fast to start using water from the Rio Grande, according to a memo from the Customers Advisory Committee. That would be possible, the committee says, if the city laid claim to water rights it owns from the San Juan-Chama Project in Northern New Mexico and Colorado. That water could be released into the Rio Grande.

Using all the San Juan-Chama water is the only way to guarantee a reliable water supply during drought, the memo says.

"It's extremely urgent, and much of that urgency is from the …