The Acequia Institute (TAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization
dedicated to research, education, and program extension to support the
flourishing of the acequias, or communal irrigation canals, farming
communities of the Upper Rio Grande watershed in New Mexico and Colorado.
Since the 1980s, beginning with the work of the precursors of TAI,
including the Colorado College Rio Grande Bioregions Project (est. 1986),
several research grants led to the development of what is possibly the
largest multi-media collection of archival materials related to the
environmental, cultural, legal, and social history of acequia farms and
farming families.
Supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities #RO
22707-94, the Ford Foundation, and the Colorado Historical Society, between
1995 and 2005, a group of 15 social scientists and humanities scholars were
led by a group of nine Chicana/o acequia farm families in conducting the
first major study of acequia agriculture since the years of the Great
Depression when the federal government conducted its famous Tewa Basin
study (Weigle 1975).