Doña Ana County property owners will find a small but consequential question on their November ballot: whether to approve a 0.25-mill property tax to help fund the Doña Ana Soil and Water Conservation District. If approved, the levy would cost the average homeowner in Las Cruces or Doña Ana County about $27 per year, money the district says it needs to keep pace with soil health, water conservation and flood-response work across the region.
District Manager Jennifer Kleitz laid out the reasoning behind the measure in an interview with KRWG Public Media, explaining that the district currently receives only about $23,000 to $28,000 a year in state legislative funding — not nearly enough to run an operation that serves landowners, ranchers, the city and the county alike. Soil and water conservation districts like this one trace back to the Dust Bowl era, and New Mexico now has roughly 43 of them functioning as a form of local government, according to the same KRWG report.
The district's footprint is slightly smaller than Doña Ana County itself, since one corner of the county falls under the neighboring Caballo Soil and Water Conservation District, KRWG reports. The district's boundaries matter now: city residents will be voting on, and paying, the same tax as rural producers.
Why the District Says Grants Aren't Enough
Kleitz told KRWG that the district leans heavily on outside grant programs to do its conservation work, including the New Mexico Department of Agriculture's Healthy Soil Program, which offers legislative grant funding that local producers, farmers and ranchers can apply for through the district. That program flows from the state's Healthy Soil Act, a 2019 law that created a statewide framework for helping farmers and ranchers voluntarily adopt soil health practices, according to the statute cited by Justia Law.
The district also helps administer the Interstate Stream Commission's cover crop program, which funds seed, planting, preparation and maintenance costs for participants — though those growers must irrigate with surface or irrigation water rather than groundwater, per KRWG's reporting. The goal, as described to KRWG, is to save groundwater while keeping soil healthy. But grant dollars, Kleitz explained, are legally restricted to their designated purposes and cannot cover basic administrative overhead — which is precisely the gap the proposed mill levy is meant to fill.
That overhead isn't just paperwork for its own sake. Administrative staff ensure the district stays in compliance with state regulations and handles the procurement and reporting requirements tied to every grant it manages, KRWG reports. Without steady funding for that work, the district's ability to keep drawing down state and federal dollars for local soil and water projects is at risk.
What the Tax Would Actually Pay For
According to KRWG's interview with Kleitz, the mill levy would support more field technicians, additional administrative staff, and an expansion of the district's Neighborhoods program — an effort planting more than 2,000 trees across Las Cruces and Doña Ana County. It would also fund cost-share programs for rainwater harvesting, bale grazing and noxious weed treatment, along with a planned facility stocked with equipment for flood assistance, including rental pumps for residents dealing with flooding.
The stakes around soil health are not abstract in the Mesilla Valley. Drought dries out soil and makes it unhealthy, while healthier soil stays in place and holds water more effectively, KRWG notes — a dynamic local farmers already work against using drip tape and piping to deliver water directly to plants, along with soil amendments like biomes and more natural fertilizers to stabilize root systems. Those pressures come amid a broader Groundwater Alliance discussion of groundwater depletion and conservation measures statewide.
The scale of what's at stake for agriculture locally is significant: Doña Ana County leads New Mexico in pecan production, with 30,200 bearing acres that produced 55 million pounds of pecans in 2024, per the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Yet the vast majority of the county's growers are small operations: 95% of its 2,187 farms gross under $250,000 annually, and the average farmer is 61 years old, according to a USDA-based analysis from Growing Food Connections. Those small producers often lack the private capital to fund irrigation upgrades or erosion control on their own, which is part of why district-administered grants and technical assistance carry outsized importance.
Beyond Trees and Cover Crops
The district's work extends into a couple of other named programs mentioned in KRWG's report: the NeighborWoods project, which plants trees, and Seeds for Success, which grows native grass seed for the Bureau of Land Management. The district also participates in both the Healthy Soil Program and the Interstate Stream Commission's cover crop program, per the same interview.
The district's activities aren't limited to hyper-local tree planting and flood pumps, however. Its work also includes programs such as the Healthy Soil Program and the Interstate Stream Commission's cover crop program.
No Guarantee at the Ballot Box
Under New Mexico's Soil and Water Conservation District Act, conservation districts are legally authorized to impose property tax mill levies for operations, flood control and conservation programs — but only if voters approve the measure in a referendum, according to the statute published by Justia Law. State law also allows districts to exclude property inside incorporated cities and towns from a mill levy if that carve-out is specified during the referendum process, per the same statute.
The measure still faces a vote, underscoring why clear communication about the tax's cost and purpose matters for the Doña Ana district heading into November.
Doña Ana County voters looking to weigh in should consult the county's election calendar for early voting and absentee-ballot deadlines. The measure will appear on the November ballot alongside other state and local races.
