2024 Awards

Norm Gaume, P.E. (ret.), BSEE, MSCE; President, Water Advocates for New Mexico and the Middle Rio Grande; NM Water Ambassador; Research Scholar, University of New Mexico.

Norm is a retired, licensed water engineer. Educated in New Mexico he came to the water world through the water workforce development at New Mexico State University, funded by EPA to support implementation of the 1972 Clean Water Act.

His professional focus is reforming New Mexico's water governance for the state's water and economic security, environment, and cultural heritage. His ability to educate the public on the science and engineering of hydrology and riparian habitats has fostered riverine and riparian conservation throughout the state.  

For example, Norm managed the water resources investigations and collaborative planning for the City of Albuquerque that transformed Albuquerque’s understanding of its aquifer and its water supply strategy (1990-1997). 

Secondly, as Director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (1997-2002), he convened and led an intensive collaboration of Pecos Valley water users resulting in a settlement that has resulted in New Mexico’s compliance with the Pecos River Compact and a US Supreme Court decree since 2001. In this collaborative process New Mexico has worked with Texas to ensure the best water quality (and quantity) possible from the Pecos River is delivered to Texas.  The Pecos River Compact’s watershed assessment area begins at Santa Rosa Lake in New Mexico, extends approximately 900 miles to Amistad International Reservoir in Texas.  Increased salinity from various usage/management practices and the natural salt-bearing formations underlying the Pecos basin make management of high salinity levels particularly difficult.  Norm’s continuing guidance and extended participation in this process led to the Pecos River Water Quality Coalition forming to champion improved water quality in the two-state, binational region. The Coalition’s goal is to reduce salt concentrations and their attendant impacts to increase usable water supplies for agricultural, municipal, industrial, and environmental purposes.

Thirdly, from 2014-2020 as a retired citizen, Norm shared his expertise and knowledge gained as Director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission to educate the public on the geology, hydrology and engineering principals surrounding a proposed diversion of the Gila River in the Cliff/Gila Valley.  This engagement derived as a response to proposals for the Arizona Water Settlement Act (Central Arizona Project), looking at the feasibility of detaining 14,000 acre-feet of water in New Mexico on the Gila River as awarded to New Mexico by the Court - in exchange for San Juan River water from New Mexico. The desire for another reservoir in New Mexico was strong at times and had been in the planning books since the 1960s.  However, a place to locate such a reservoir that was geohydrologically and ecologically sound just did not exist.  As Director of New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (1997-2002), Norm’s team had shown that to be true.  He re-engaged the battle to once again educate and inform the public on what was realistic and best for the river.   He was instrumental in the designation of the Gila River as the nation’s most endangered river in 2019 by the American Rivers Organization.  Finally, in 2020 the Interstate Stream Commission voted to kill the diversion project.

In 2024 Norm serves as President of New Mexico Water Advocates.  This non-governmental group has a vision for “a balanced water future for New Mexico, in which we equitably adapt to climate change and are stewards of our water, thereby preserving our diverse cultures, economy, food production, and our watersheds, rivers, aquifers, and natural ecosystems.”  The mission of which is to advocate for a balanced, equitable, and resilient water future for …. all of New Mexico through public education and engagement, civic participation, insistence on effective water governance, and securing transformative changes in state water planning, policy, and law.  In the January 2024 newsletter, Norm introduced the grass roots website for Water Advocates which serves to offer citizens resources to engage with their legislators to respectfully demand their attention to the vital role of water in everything, in all of life.

“(We) demand State Government begin responsible water management of wet water, not permits and paper, to provide for the public health, safety, and welfare of all New Mexicans. “

Last and not least, Norm is a skilled whitewater paddler. He is a board member of the Adobe Whitewater Club of New Mexico, whose petition against privatization of New Mexico’s rivers and streams was granted by the New Mexico Supreme Court in 2022.

The conservation community of Grant County New Mexico is greatly appreciative of Norm’s efforts for river conservation across the state, and especially grateful for Norm’s efforts to retain the Gila River as a free-flowing river in New Mexico.

Donna Stevens, Upper Gila Watershed Alliance

After escaping Chicago, where she was born and raised, Donna Stevens moved to Silver City in 1987, where the Gila quickly captured her heart. In 1995, she joined a crew working on plant inventories in the Gila National Forest under the tutelage of Dr. Jack Carter. In 2003, Donna wrote the plant descriptions for a book she co-authored with Carter, Common Southwestern Native Plants: An Identification Guide, now in its third edition.

Also in 2003, Stevens began working for the Upper Gila Watershed Alliance (UGWA) in a program designed to protect springs in the Big Burro Mountains of the Gila National Forest. She spent years representing UGWA in the Forest Service’s Travel Management process to protect the Gila’s land, streams, plants, and wildlife by right-sizing the road system. 

Donna took over UGWA’s leadership in late 2009 and continued as the Executive Director until stepping down in September 2023. During her tenure, she wrote and received grants to prevent motorized access in the Gila River at Mogollon Box Day Use Area, Brushy Canyon, and Forks Campground. She spearheaded a project to restore Bar 6 Canyon, a tributary of the Gila River, and Adair Spring, a tributary of the San Francisco River. 

To protect the Gila River in the Gila Wilderness Area, Stevens received grant funding to remove manmade debris (wood, refrigerators, tires, mattresses, etc.) washed into the river during the historic 2013 flood. From 2016 to 2023, she wrote and received several grants to eradicate invasive tamarisk trees from the Gila River, including the East, Middle, and West Forks, (and downstream in the Gila River Bird Area), from 2016 thru 2023.

Stevens finds that preventing degradation in the first place is more satisfying than restoration work. Her proudest accomplishment is her involvement in the campaign to prevent a diversion on the Gila River. This misguided, infeasible, and prohibitively expensive proposed diversion would have caused irreparable harm to the river and the plants and animals that depend on it. 

After a sometimes grueling 15 years, the diversion project finally died when New Mexico’s Interstate Stream Commission voted to stop wasting millions of dollars studying an infeasible project whose costs outweighed the benefits.

When not working on conservation issues, Donna likes to hike in the Gila, hang out with family and friends, read, and learn to play music. 

Leia Barnett, WildEarth Guardians, Greater Gila New Mexico Advocate

Born and raised in the foothills and arroyos of the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico, Leia is grateful to bring her love and deep reverence for the high desert country of the Southwest to the conservation and environmental advocacy space at WildEarth Guardians. Ever intrigued by the interaction, dissociation, and deep interconnection between the human and the more-than-human worlds, Leia suspects that reimagining our stories from the inside out may be part of an enduring solution to some of the crises of our time. When she’s not endeavoring to understand the complexities of a successful justice-based landscape protection campaign, Leia can be found mountain-side or river-side, praising the feathered and four-legged ones, and planning her next epic snack.

Dr. Thomas (Tom) Turner, Professor of Biology, Curator of Fishes in the Museum of Southwestern Biology, University of New Mexico

Thomas (Tom) Turner is a Professor of Biology, Curator of Fishes in the Museum of Southwestern Biology, at the University of New Mexico, where he has worked for 25 years. He completed a PhD in Biological Sciences in 1996 at Florida International University and held a post-doctoral research position in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at Texas A&M University before coming to New Mexico. Tom founded the Turner Aquatic Conservation Laboratory that investigates questions about the ecology and evolution of rivers, springs, and streams in the American Southwest, with a central focus of understanding how drought and wildfire disturbances affect ecological and evolutionary resilience of stream communities and species. 

In the Gila River Basin, his research group conducts basic and applied research on upland fishes like Gila Trout, Spikedace, and Loach Minnow, and uses genomics, stable isotope ecology, and the vast resources held in natural history museums to establish baseline conditions and develop predictions about future impacts to these species. He serves on science advisory boards for the Gila River Native Fishes Conservation Program, the Gila Trout and Chihuahua Chub Recovery Implementation Program, and Lower Colorado Multispecies Conservation Program. 

He also directs the Museum Research Traineeship Program at UNM that spurs student-led innovations in use of cultural, biological, and geological objects to evaluate long-term ecosystem change in the American Southwest and beyond.