Azotea Tunnel East Portal, New Mexico

The Azotea Tunnel leaves the Ojo Diverson Dam in Colorado, charged full of water from the Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, on the western side of the Continental Divide, and crosses into New Mexico. A mile after crossing the state line, it crosses the Divide, invisibly, underground. At its southern end, after 13 miles underground, it becomes an open channel, on land controlled by the Jicarilla Apache. The water flows through the engineered channel of Willow Creek for several miles into Heron Lake, which was built in the late 1960s to hold the imported water as part of the Bureau of Reclamation’s San Juan-Chama Project, which delivers around 100,000 acre-feet per year through the Azotea Tunnel. One acre-foot is 325,857 gallons. The water leaves the system through a spillway at the base of the dam, where it flows into the Chama River. In just a few hundred yards, the river enters another reservoir, El Vado Lake.