T or C Municipal Airport seeks a new layout plan for future growth and funding

The current Truth or Consequences Municipal Airport Layout Plan is dated 2004, with amendments made in 2006–and the Federal Aviation Administration and New Mexico Department of Transportation Aviation Division agree that it’s time for a new one. 

The federal and state agencies want the city to map out future growth and capital projects and has made it part of its funding criterion. 

The FAA and NMDOT Aviation Division also don’t have an Airport Property Map on file for the city, and that too is required. 

The city’s airport engineering firm is Delta Airport Consultants located in Albuquerque. The city’s representative is Certified Manager Cheryl Rodriquez. 

She spoke at the June 10 city commission meeting, requesting that a grant application to FAA and NMDOT Aviation Division be approved for submission. 

Her firm will not only oversee the airport layout plan, but also write rules, regulations and standards following FAA guides and create a map laying out the city-owned municipal airport property and nearby owner’s property.  

It will cost $582,000, if the grant is awarded, with the FAA paying about 95 percent, the NMDOT paying 5 percent and the city paying 1 to 5 percent of the cost. Rodriquez said she thought the city’s share would be 1 percent. 

The FAA and NMDOT have funded about 95 percent or more of any development that has occurred at the airport since its inception in the 1940s. 

Future growth and needs will be considered using FAA formulas and methods. The city has one paved runway and five dirt runways. Closing one or more of the dirt runways will be evaluated for effects on private development–whether closures will encourage or discourage it. 

Remember Hot Springs Land Development, which bought about 7 square miles of land around the airport around 2006? It expected the city’s airport to service fat cats going to the spaceport for their suborbital flights with their entourages in tow. Its surrounding land would be developed as an entrepôt providing aeronautical support and hospitality services, and maybe a race track. 

HSLD nearly got to be the city’s official airport operator. One of the snags was finding enough well water, which pumping would not injure prior water-right holders. 

HSLD gave up on getting city cooperation, their relationship souring around 2012 or so. They auctioned off their land two years ago, but evidently that too hit a snag. Something about the plats not being filed or approved as an official subdivision, making it impossible to transfer titles until that was done. 

But water may be the major impediment to future development around the airport. 

The city airport has a well, but there is no record of its flow capacity on the New Mexico Environment Department’s Water Watch website. I don’t think it produces much water. About five or so years ago the NMED ordered the city to do a lot of work on the well to make the water safe and potable, but I couldn’t find any record of what was done. 

About two years ago the Office of the State Engineer closed the Hot Springs Water Basin, of which there is no good and clear map, but it appears to extend to the city airport and surrounding property. The closure of the basin is for new water appropriation, but individuals may apply to the OSE for a domestic well permit, which allows use of 1 acre foot a year, if permitted.  

The city, if I remember correctly, has a water right of around 2,400 acre feet a year and it’s using about 1,100 to 1,400 acre feet a year, so it has about 1,000 acre feet it could possibly lease or provide. 

I sure hope the city doesn’t expect the people to pay to run water and sewer mains about eight miles to the airport and its surrounding property in order to “encourage” growth. 

Water was not mentioned in the grant application scope of work, nor in any part of the discussion at the meeting. But it would seem to limit future development and therefore the scope of work–why waste engineering time and the people’s money on the “feasibility” parts of the study if lack of water proscribes such growth?

The city commission approved the submission of the grant unanimously, with little discussion.