The Italian millionaire who is among the owners of 3,200 acres slated for development in Winter Harbor and Gouldsboro is at the epicenter of a controversial “water mining” project in Catron County, a rural area southwest of Albuquerque.

More than 200 formal protests have been filed against a plan by Modena’s Augustin Plains Ranch, LLC to drill 37 wells, each 2,000 feet deep, to pump as much as 54,000 acre-feet of groundwater a year from the 9,000-acre ranch to the Rio Grande River some 65 miles away.

With one acre-foot equaling 325,851 gallons, that’s half as much groundwater as the 500,000 residents of nearby Albuquerque consume in a year.

In an area where water is more valuable than oil, the groundwater mined by those wells would be sold to communities upstream of where it would be piped into the Rio Grande, meeting their obligation to not deplete the downstream flow on the ecologically sensitive river basin.

Many farmers and other residents of the area surrounding the proposed well site have asked New Mexico State Engineer John D’Antonio to pull the plug on the project out of concern that drawing down the aquifer would affect their shallow wells.

Sharing their concerns is Don Tripp, a Democratic state legislator from Socorro who represents Catron County.

“This water would be drawn from a closed basin, so whatever water is mined will not be recharged,” Tripp told The Ellsworth American.

Also objecting to the plan is Bill Turner, an Albuquerque-based water broker and one of seven members of the board of directors of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.

“This application is squirrelly as hell,” Turner said. “The application is as vague as hell, but shows that the water would be used to offset depletions by utilities upstream that are taking water for municipal purposes. It’s a scheme to take more water out of the river upstream and replace it downstream, with the water being sold to make up for the depletion upstream.

“In the meantime, all of the farmers will have diminished flow that will hurt agriculture in the area. This application will threaten water availability within the environment surrounding these proposed wells. It would lower the groundwater level by 30 feet a year, and the windmills these farmers use only penetrate the water table by 30 feet.”

Turner said a public hearing on the controversial proposal would be held within the next few months.

Turner also said he has been unable to learn much about Modena and the other investors in the proposed water mining project.

“This application was signed in Italy, and the Italians are some of the finest farmers across the pages of history,” Turner said. “He may be one of them. Who knows?

“I would suggest that, if you want to get to the bottom of all this, that you follow the money.”