T or C plans for next $25m in water system overhaul

In 2019 Wilson & Company, the city’s on-call engineering firm for water projects, turned in a report evaluating the water system and offering various “alternatives” for getting it back in shape. 

The estimated cost bruited about by then-City Manager Morris Madrid was $120 million. Since then, Google AI tells me construction costs have gone up 15 percent to 40 percent, materials accounting for the biggest rise in costs. 

I have looked at this engineering study several times and have been unable to figure out which “alternative” the city chose among the many. And the titles the city gives water projects do not appear to match the study’s projects. And the priority of what project should be done first, second, third, etc. is not clear. 

Neither I nor you can follow along. Where are we in this unclear process and what’s up next and what more needs to be done and in what order and why? Curious minds paying ever-higher water bills for this precious and scarce resource in our high-plains desert community want to know. 

City Manager Gary Whitehead, who has been in that position one and a half years, confirmed in recent months that this study is still the blueprint for water projects. 

I asked that the public be informed where we are in the process during the Infrastructure Capital Improvement Projects sessions. I asked that the 2019 study be the reference point, our only document for following along. That was about three months ago. It hasn’t happened yet, but I have hope and faith in City Manager Gary Whitehead. 

I pointed out our water system has been declared in “crisis” or in serious trouble by our city leaders for seven years. In 2019 Madrid refuted the engineering study’s finding that we were leaking 40 percent of the city water produced. He claimed it was 19 percent, but wouldn’t explain how he arrived at that figure, wrongly minimizing the crisis, the city commissioners mutely accepting his unsubstantiated claims. 

It was Madrid who made the MSD or Main Street District $9.7 million water project a priority. Why? His desire, like so many of our past city managers and city commissioners, was to favor and boost downtown businesses in order to bring in more gross receipts tax revenue–a big part of the city’s budget. 

But WSPI 1 (water system performance improvements), the $7.53 million water project, should have been done first. As I and others pointed out at MSD sessions, water pressure relief valves were a much bigger priority. The valves control pressure and allow the city to create zones–like a traffic cop rerouting cars around an accident instead of stopping it all together. Instead, for seven years, pressure surges and trickles affected huge areas of the city every time a line broke, and that yearly number was about 450 a year.  

WSPI 1 is on the starting block, but who knows how much more the city/the people have spent on patches and repairs because it didn’t do it first. Pipes and patches newly laid burst open again and/or the adjacent run of pipe burst as soon as the water was turned on. 

That’s one example why it’s important for the city commissioners and city manager to communicate with its bill-paying constituents–to assure them they are pursuing the wisest and most cost efficient course backed by the engineering report. They need to decode these big engineering plans into layman’s terms. 

Another big Wilson and Co. water plan is now on the docket that will cost $2.3 million to design $25 million in upcoming water projects. How and if it relates to the 2019 blueprint wasn’t communicated. Why this project now? 

Whitehead and Assistant City Manager Traci Alvarez asked the city commission to approve an application to the New Mexico Finance Authority’s Water Trust Board for a 100-percent $2.3 million engineering design grant at the August 28 city commission meeting and permission was given, no questions asked. 

The design will include: 

–fixing well 2, although what’s wrong with it is vague. 

–constructing a whole new well in the northern part of the city. Currently the city’s wells, besides the low-producing well at the airport, are all in the southern part of town, near the city’s solid waste transfer station. Well 2 is across the street at the edge of the Louis Armijo Park baseball field. The city commission just approved big engineering plans for the airport with a view to making it an industrial park to attract more business. But water and sewer will be an issue. Are the people supposed to build it so they will come? While also paying for the years of neglect of the water system in town? 

–over 31,000 linear feet of waterline. Where? To the airport? It was not stated in the documents in the city packet and it wasn’t stated in the meeting. 

Business and tourism have always been the overriding interest of the T or C (and Elephant Butte and Sierra County) governing bodies, at least for the 21 years I’ve been here. Trickle-down Reaganomics  still holds sway, although it has been proven by economists that trickle-up, that is, taking care of the people’s needs and well being are what leads to economic gains. An equal economy for and by the people has businesses pay their share of taxes. An egalitarian government also lets business people who know the market decide where to develop industrial parks and lets them build them on their own dime, not the people’s.  

I posed questions about the $2.3 million engineering design to Whitehead, but didn’t get a response back in time for this article. 

Whitehead has been responsive and communicative and has learned a massive amount about the water system (and other city systems) in a short time. If allowed to move without interference by the city commission he will likely set wise priorities for water projects that will benefit the people. At the very least he will forthrightly communicate if this next $25 million chunk of water projects is to make development at the airport viable. I will let you know when I know.  

Communication, in general, has improved greatly via the city website. Here is a link to the current water projects: https://www.torcnm.gov/business-development/city-blueprint-capital-projects/your-water-our-work/ 

Referring to it and a construction chart I received from Alvarez last February, I pieced together water-system construction: what’s been spent and built–about $12 million–and what’s currently being spent and built–about $47 million. 

Current: 

–Critical Waterlines, $17.6 million

–WSPI 1, $7.531 million

–WSPI 2, $9.9 million

–Shovel Ready, $4.84 million

–”City”–not sure what this is, but my best guess–two projects, $1.6 million and $1.075 million

–HUD 2024-2025, $4.3 million

 

TOTAL CURRENT WATER PROJECTS $46.846 million

Completed since 2019:  

–MSD, $9.417 million

–DWSRF (Drinking Water Self Revolving Fund), $1.22 million

–Booster Station & Austin St., $712,000

–Shortfall DWSRF, $550,000

TOTAL : $11.899 million

If the $120 million figure were still accurate, in three more years, when all the current projects listed are completed, since 2019’s engineering blueprint was put into action, about $60 million in projects will have been done. That would put us at the half-way mark. 

$138 million would reflect a 15-percent increase in construction costs, and in that case we would be at the 43-percent mark when the current projects are completed in about three years. 

$168 million would reflect a 40-percent increase in construction costs, and in that case we would be at the 36-percent mark when the current projects are completed in about three years. 

If the soon-to-be-designed $25 million in water projects is not sticking to the blueprint, that’s most likely not in the people’s interests.