Appeal to T or C and Village leadership

Coordination between the City of T or C and the Village on water/wastewater/street projects is absolutely necessary to ensure public money is being spent in the most efficacious manner, especially given T or C’s ever-increasing utility fees and taxes.

I suggest T or C Water/Wastewater Director Arnie Castaneda give his regular reports not only at city commission meetings, but also at Village Trustee meetings. I also suggest that Wilson & Company engineers, who are now THE “on-call” engineering firm for the city and Village, give regular reports on water/wastewater/street projects to both entities for projects in both municipalities.

It’s too late to coordinate projects that are already in the pipeline, but all future projects should be coordinated, with joint grant applications strengthening the likelihood of government-agency funding and legislators’ approval. Both agencies and legislators regularly exhort local governments to coordinate their grant and capital outlay requests.

As you know, the water pipes in the Village belong to T or C and the sewer pipes to the Village.

I recently looked at a Village legal ad in the Sentinel (Aug. 29 edition) requesting bids for a wastewater project. The project includes “rehabilitating two lift stations,” and “rehabilitation of 9,186 feet of 8 inch sewer line by method of cured in place pipe.” In addition, the project calls for “rehabilitation of 45 manholes within the Village.”

I don’t understand how the Village and T or C cannot have coordinated on this project, as stated by Village Treasurer/Clerk Amanda Cardona, especially given that Wilson & Company is both the Village’s and the City’s “on-call” engineering firm.

The Village has always paid the city for wastewater services. Villagers pay the same sewer rate as city residents—rates set to pay for sewer operations, maintenance and repair. Yet Villagers are supposed to pay for lift stations and manholes too?

And, if I understood a recent report by Castaneda, the city’s wastewater treatment plant cannot process the Village’s sewage fast enough. He said “we’re going to have to build a loop.” I interpreted this as meaning that a loop will increase the volume capacity, sending it around in a holding pattern and slowing down and reducing the amount going to the sewage treatment plant.

The city and the Village need to coordinate the solution to this sewage-volume problem. But the Village has already gone out to bid on its wastewater project! And, it’s using a “cast-in-place” method, which is expensive.

Besides the wastewater project, the tiny, poor Village has four other major capital projects, all engineered by Wilson & Co.

The four other projects, as described by Village Treasurer Clerk Cardona:

–Doris Street: water and sewer line replacement, street to be torn up and replaced. This project started in 2019 and the Village told the city about it and coordinated with the city. Cardona said the city “pulled out” during the covid crisis. Bid awarded to Spartan Construction, Cardona said.

–Mona Avenue: water and sewer line replacement, street to be torn up and replaced. Same coordination with the city in 2019, but the city pulled out. Bid awarded to Deming Excavation, Inc., Cardona said.

–Rio Grande: a street-only project, Cardona says. When and if the sewer needs replacing, a “pipe-bursting” method will be used.

–Veater Street: a street-only project, Cardona says.

As with T or C, the projects are broken up to maximize Wilson & Co. fees. I don’t blame Wilson & Co. They are doing their job, which is to maximize profits. They are a private company.

I blame city and Village elected officials. They are supposed to be looking out for the people’s best interests. They approve engineering studies and projects with a lack of vetting and communication with the public.

Lack of vetting and accountability is greatly aided and abetted by hiring an engineering firm “on-call.” It hides the who, what, where, why and when of projects from the public. The engineering firm is hired behind closed doors by an unnamed city or Village staffer or elected official to initiate a project for for some unexplained reason. Who defines its scope, who writes the grant, who is driving the grant-writing/funding strategy and who is getting paid for what is also hidden.

The Village’s project pipeline is the latest example of lack of vetting, coordination and communication.

It is nonsensical for the Village to pave its portion of Veater Street. Veater Street and its tributaries are slated for massive water and sewer line repairs by the city.

It’s conspicuously wasteful to do  “whole streets” work on Rio Grande—paving, sidewalks, gutter—when everyone, especially Wilson & Co., knows the water and sewer lines should be replaced first. Tearing up the street is much less expensive than the wildly expensive pipe-bursting method the village proposes to use later.

The city and Village should obviously coordinate on developing a master plan to fix water and sewer systems and street replacement. And they should communicate with the public the who, what, where, why and when of that plan and projects proposed.

The coordination needs to be done by a T or C-hired engineer who is paid a salary and doesn’t earn more by piling on more projects and who is required and expected to communicate in layman’s’ terms with the public. The city engineer’s cost could be shared by the Village on shared projects. Right now vultures are looming over the dying water and wastewater carcasses and no one is looking out for the public.

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Kathleen Sloan
Kathleen Sloan

Kathleen Sloan has been a local-government reporter for 17 years, covering counties and cities in three states—New Mexico, Iowa and Florida. She has also covered the arts for various publications in Virginia, New Mexico and Iowa. Sloan worked for the Truth or Consequences Herald newspaper from 2006 to 2013; it closed December 2019. She returned to T or C in 2019 and founded the online newspaper, the Sierra County Sun, with Diana Tittle taking the helm as editor during the last year and a half of operation. The Sun closed December 2021, concurrent with Sloan retiring. SierraCountySun.org is still an open website, with hundreds of past articles still available. Sloan is now a board member of the not-for-profit organization, the Sierra County Public-Interest Journalism Project, which supported the Sun and is currently sponsoring the Sierra County Citizen, another free and open website. Sloan is volunteering as a citizen journalist, covering the T or C beat. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.

Posts: 138

2 Comments

    • Yes, the Village of Williamsburg, colloquially is often referred to as the Village. Sorry I slipped into local parlance. It is confusing to readers and I’ll shorten the reference to Williamsburg, not the Village, next time.

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