Mike A. Hamman has more than 40 years of engineering and water resources management experience primarily in New Mexico with a focus on upper Rio Grande basin water projects and issues. He has worked as a registered professional engineer in New Mexico since 1990 and has recently retired.

Mike joined the Governor’s Office as Senior Water Advisor on January 3 from the position of Chief Executive Officer and Chief Engineer of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  He joined the District in 2015 and led a staff of 220 that provides irrigation, drainage, flood control and ecological services for the middle Rio Grande valley.  He worked with multiple jurisdictions in the region at the local, state and tribal levels in order to deliver water to 60,000 acres of irrigated farmlands that includes 12,000 acres farmed within the six middle Rio Grande Pueblo lands.

Prior to the MRGCD, Mike served for 17 years for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation culminating as Area Manager with responsibilities over 13 federal water projects from the San Luis Valley in Colorado to Fort Quitman in Texas.  As Area Manager, he led a staff of 200 in six field offices that perform operations and maintenance of well fields, diversion dams, large dams and reservoirs such as Elephant Butte, river channel maintenance on the Rio Grande and Pecos basins, water modeling and accounting for project water, and implementation of endangered species programs.

Mike served as a Regional Water Planner for the NM Interstate Stream Commission for two years, five years as the Water Utility Director for the City of Santa Fe, and was the Water Administrator and head of the Utility Authority for the Jicarilla Apache Nation for nearly 9 years.  At the Nation, he led the development of its water administration policies, created a water rights leasing program that assisted power producers, oil and gas operators, and the City of Santa Fe in meeting their water needs.  He was instrumental in the development of the Nation’s water and wastewater treatment and delivery systems project that was funded by the federal Jicarilla Apache Reservation Rural Water System Act that appropriated $45M beginning in 2002 to address inadequate water and wastewater systems for the town of Dulce.

Mike was raised in Taos and received his Bachelors of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of New Mexico in 1983.  Mike and his family live on a small farm in Corrales, New Mexico.