Corrales bans fireworks as severe drought emergency deepens

Corrales residents, acequia users and property owners now face immediate limits on how they use water and flame: the Village Council declared a state of emergency on May 26 and banned fireworks and fires of any kind inside the village as drought conditions turned the Corrales Bosque Preserve and nearby agricultural lands into a severe fire risk.

The move came through Resolution 26-28, which the village agenda used to declare an emergency, recognize severe drought conditions and prohibit the sale or use of fireworks during the drought. That is the part local officials can enforce directly. What they cannot control is the water moving through the Rio Grande system, and that leaves farmers and gardeners with less certainty about whether ditch water will return in time for the season.

The drought emergency in Corrales sits inside a much larger statewide crisis. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s Executive Order 2026-026, issued May 20, said 94% of New Mexico was in drought according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and that the winter of 2025-2026 brought the lowest snowpack, highest temperatures and lowest runoff levels in recorded history. The order also said wildfire counts from Jan. 1 to April 30 were more than double the average for that stretch of the year. On May 26, USDA designated Sandoval County and other New Mexico counties as natural disaster areas, opening the door to certain assistance programs for producers.

For Corrales growers, the sharpest blow came earlier. On April 21, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District suspended irrigation deliveries to the Corrales area after river levels fell below the threshold needed for pumping water into the Corrales Main Canal. The district had already warned on April 9 that declining river levels could soon affect deliveries, and later said irrigators should expect dry conditions. That means some ditch-water users may have to rely on wells, drip systems or reduced plantings, while others may simply be out of luck.

The village has been telegraphing the danger for weeks. In a May 8 message, officials said Corrales’s Bosque covers 662 acres and said the Angel Hill 500,000-gallon tank was nearly ready to be filled. The village also held an informational meeting on agriculture and disaster assistance on May 21, and its farmland preservation program remained open for applications through June 22. Corrales also used an emergency fireworks restriction in 2022, underscoring that the current ban is part of a pattern the village resorts to when drought and fire risk intensify.

For a community defined by open land, irrigation and bosque habitat, the emergency declaration does more than prohibit fireworks. It signals that fire danger has moved from a seasonal concern to a daily governing issue, with local leaders now trying to protect homes, farms and the bosque before the next spark finds dry ground.