Yale Environment 360: U.S. officials estimated this week that the Elephant Butte reservoir in southern New Mexico is holding about 65,057 acre-feet of water, which is only about 3 percent of its capacity of 2.2 million acre-feet, largely as a result of prolonged drought conditions and unusually low spring snowmelt from nearby mountains. From the mid-1980s until 2000 the reservoir was nearly filled to capacity, as illustrated in a 1994 satellite image (top) released by NASA.