5 Things Coloradans and New Mexicans Argue About, Starting With Green Chile

In 2017, Colorado and New Mexico raced to approve chile license plates.

Coloradans and New Mexicans don’t agree on whose chile is better, and that’s just one argument across the border.

Here are the things Coloradans and New Mexicans argue about, starting with green chile.

1. Green Chile

Green chile sets Hatch, New Mexico, against Pueblo, Colorado, and each town has a crop to defend.

New Mexico grew 8,100 acres of Hatch chile in 2017, which led the country.

As of 2018, the most recent full count of Pueblo chile, from 2012, found 333 acres.

You can see the rivalry in the grocery aisle, since Whole Foods said in 2015 that it would stock Pueblo chile instead of Hatch in all of its Colorado stores.

In 2019, Colorado’s governor challenged New Mexico to a chile taste-off, and New Mexico’s governor replied that her state doesn’t just spell it right but does it better.

Later that year, New Mexico Tourism put up billboards in Colorado that called New Mexico the chile capital of the world.

One of the signs in Colorado Springs was altered to read zero miles, with a Colorado flag added.

The fight reaches the law too, since New Mexico law bars anyone from selling chile as New Mexico chile unless it was grown there.

Many people on both sides of the state line pick a team early and stick with it.

Taste both before you choose a side.

2. La Plata River Water

Colorado and New Mexico have argued over the La Plata River since a drought in 1917 and 1918.

After dry years in 1917 and 1918, New Mexico was ready to sue Colorado over water in the La Plata River Basin, according to a Colorado legislative memo.

The states signed the La Plata River Compact in 1922 instead.

As the Durango Telegraph described it, half the flow measured at Hesperus, Colorado, must cross the state line for New Mexico’s use.

The river also regularly goes dry between Hesperus and the state line.

A Colorado water district once proposed Long Hollow Reservoir to help meet the compact.

New Mexico’s Upper Colorado River commissioner said the commission didn’t agree with the hydrologic analysis behind it.

In 1922, the compact took the place of a lawsuit.

The district’s president said the compact has had problems since it was ratified in 1922.

3. Border Survey Lines

Colorado and New Mexico took their border to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 37th parallel is meant to mark the line, and in 1919 New Mexico sued over where it sits.

Colorado defended an 1868 survey line, while New Mexico pushed for a line from a 1903 survey.

The Supreme Court ruled for Colorado in 1925.

The Court relied on how long governments had accepted the older line, more than half a century by then.

The old line stayed.

If you cross from Colorado into New Mexico today, you’re crossing the line the Court settled in 1925.

4. Vermejo River Water

The Vermejo River starts in southern Colorado and flows mostly through New Mexico.

In 1975, a Colorado court gave a Colorado steel company a conditional right to divert 75 cubic feet of water per second from the river's headwaters.

New Mexico water users, including Phelps Dodge and Kaiser Steel, sued in federal court in New Mexico.

In 1978, that court barred the company from diverting any water from the river, citing the senior water rights of the New Mexico users.

Colorado then asked the Supreme Court to divide the river between the two states.

In 1984, the Court sided with New Mexico and dismissed the case.

The justices said the fact that a river starts in Colorado doesn't automatically entitle Colorado to a share of its waters.

5. Gold King Mine Spill

The 2015 Gold King Mine spill put Colorado and New Mexico on opposite sides of a Supreme Court filing.

It fouled rivers in three states with arsenic, lead and other heavy metals.

In June 2016, New Mexico asked for permission to sue Colorado at the U.S. Supreme Court.

New Mexico said Colorado should be held responsible for that contamination and for decades of acidic drainage from mines near the Animas River's headwaters.

If you fish or farm downstream, you care who pays for a spill upstream.

Colorado's attorney general pointed at the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which had accepted full responsibility for the spill.

The Supreme Court denied New Mexico's request on June 26, 2017.

Justices Thomas and Alito would have let the case go forward.

The case ended there.

The Chile License Plate Race

Not every Colorado and New Mexico rivalry is this serious.

In 2017, Colorado and New Mexico raced to approve chile license plates.

In Colorado, a Pueblo lawmaker sponsored a Pueblo chile plate.

In New Mexico, a lawmaker from Carlsbad sponsored a chile pepper plate.

New Mexico's Motor Vehicle Division went ahead with its plate at the regular price after the governor vetoed a version with an extra fee.

Colorado's governor signed the Pueblo chile plate bill on April 18, 2017, with a one-time $50 surcharge.

New Mexico got there first.

The Cumbres & Toltec Railroad

Not everything between Colorado and New Mexico is a dispute.

Colorado and New Mexico jointly own the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

The route crosses the border.

The railroad covers 64 miles between Chama, New Mexico, and Antonito, Colorado.