TOOLS OF THE TRADE
A Vital Solution MIKE LISK HELPS RANCHERS REDISTRIBUTE THEIR MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE By Nora Hickey
Cattle at a Remote Well drinker. The drinkers conserve groundwater, pumping only what is needed. Photo courtesy of Mike Lisk.
The history of New Mexico is one inextricably linked with water— or the lack of it. Rain comes rarely, but when it does, it often arrives as a welcome deluge to a choked land. New Mexicans are familiar with the word drought and the body’s visceral reactions to it. Who here hasn’t felt the dry heat of a sun-bleached day? Those who dwell in the city are no strangers to water restrictions on their allotment for yards and gardens. But what about those who must labor in fields afar, the men and women who keep the agricultural mechanisms of the state turning? For rural ranchers of New Mexico, the problem of water can be a matter of life or death. That’s why the story of one man’s relationship to water is so significant. Mike Lisk came to Lincoln County after a thirty-year career as an engineer in Arizona. “My wife and I moved to New Mexico to retire and we bought a ranch,” Lisk explains. Lisk’s plan to spend his days leisurely on the land was soon thwarted by the issue that occupies many New Mexican ranchers in the end—water. Or rather, the poor distribution of it. He explains, “There was feed in a lot of areas on our ranch, but it was too far for the cattle to walk to. The areas that were concentrated by water were overgrazed.” Once Lisk started spreading 56
edible New Mexico | SPRING 2019
the sources of water more evenly on their land, he saw immediate effects: less overgrazing and fatter, more content cattle. Lisk was curious about other ranchers’ experiences and started to visit with others to see if they suffered from the same water distribution issues. “We saw a tremendous waste of water with the current system. Much of the water is lost to evaporation,” Lisk says. The windmill system, found on many rural ranches throughout New Mexico, works by, of course, the wind, which causes the arms to move and water to be pumped from a source into open containers for animals to drink from. But the issue with the mechanism, which has punctuated open land for generations, is the loss of water that comes with the inability to stop its flow. “When the water gets pumped out of the ground and the tank is full, it just overflows,” Lisk explains. “No matter the percentage of rainfall in New Mexico, it doesn’t matter—you’re going to lose about a third of the water with the windmills.” To address that water waste, Lisk created a solar-powered monitoring and filling system for cattle and wildlife drinkers. “Our systems are fully automated and solar-powered. They use pressure differentiations to sense water levels in tanks far, far away. You can look and see
