The hypocrisy on display during the Sept. 13 Truth or Consequences city commission meeting was hard to stomach. The city commissioners, for the first time in my four years of attending all but a few city meetings, asked critical-thinking questions, demanded facts and proof and evidence and in general held the Office of the State Engineer’s representatives accountable for the closure of the Hot Springs Underground Water Basin in July.
The city commission’s gad-fly performance would have been welcome, since I definitely believe in government accountability and in using facts and evidence for making governmental decisions. But watching them hold the OSE to a much higher standard than themselves was galling.
The city commission has never held itself or city staff accountable, has never asked penetrating questions of themselves or city staff or hired engineers, has never demanded a written report, let alone data, facts, evidence and documentation. I have watched the city commissioners’ automaton- and clone-like actions. They are performative and predictable. Before passing an agenda item the city commissioners gush and thank city staff and then unanimously rubber-stamp whatever staff requested with no discussion.
City Commissioner Shelly Harrelson loudly asked OSE representatives “Where’s the data?” and “Where’s the study?” several times, not listening to their response. The OSE’s hydrologic studies of the basin had been done by their own scientists for years, and for the last year all new-water applications had been turned down based on their modeling, the OSE said. When documents were provided in the chat section of the online meeting, Harrelson complained the most recent study was “10 years old,” and “Things change,” disregarding the OSE’s statements and study document.
Commissioners Destiny Mitchell and Merry Jo Fahl asked, “how do you know how much water is left [in the Hot Springs Underground Water Basin],” and did not seem to accept the OSE’s statement that their study and administration of basins are based on water rights given out or water appropriated, not on water left in a basin. OSE water resource manager Cheryl Thacker said protecting water right holders was the goal as well as protecting the resource. “Don’t you want to protect your existing businesses,” Thacker asked, which got no response from city commissioners.
Mitchell asked if the OSE had monitoring wells in place, as if it is the OSE’s duty and not the city’s to protect and watch and study the hot springs mineral water that is T or C’s tourist draw and money maker.
The only time the city has tried to protect the hot springs was when John Mulcahy was mayor around 2013. He spearheaded passing local laws that required domestic well permits be issued by the OSE and the city before drilling. He pushed through laws that also controlled where the effluent goes, since the minerals are corrosive and were damaging the sewer system as well as violating Clean-Water-Act discharge rules. The city does not enforce these laws. Effluent is going into the ground or the sewer system.
Mulcahy also pushed through a study, to be done while a moratorium of domestic wells was enacted. Professor Michael Person of New Mexico Tech was hired to do the study with his students for $50,000. That study has never been referred to again by the city.
Person recommended the city put in monitoring wells, which the city did not do. Mitchell bragged that her students (she teaches earth sciences within the T or C public-school system) are working with New Mexico Tech “on this very problem,” when it was obvious she had not read the Person study.
Person did not recommend closing the hot-springs-mineral-water part of the Hot Springs Underground Water Basin, and the city has granted domestic well permits in the hot springs district without limit or monitoring since then.
Thacker explained that the OSE, because of the “Bounds case,” must give out domestic well permits to applicants, which was explained to these same commission members about six months ago when they asked the OSE to give them general instruction on the hot springs.
Nevertheless, Fahl said “it didn’t make sense” to continue to give out domestic well permits in the hot springs basin if there are no more water rights to give out, if all the water is appropriated, as if the city has not also issued domestic well permits to all who apply.
Hechler, without offering proof, asserted that the area is “growing” and it was “hard” to have development repressed by the closure of the basin to new appropriations. His follow-up questions also exhibited interest in business and development. Were multi-family residences considered commercial or could they get a domestic well permit, he asked. Thacker said multi-family dwellings were considered commercial use of water. She also said commercial use of a domestic well violates the law. Hechler asked if the OSE reclaims unused water rights, so they can be newly appropriated. Thacker said the OSE looks at forfeitures of water rights on “a case by case basis.”
Perhaps most hypocritical of all, the city commissioners did not allude to the city’s five-years-long and still ongoing protest to the Riverbend Hot Spring’s application to appropriate 300 acre feet a year of hot springs mineral water—a “new water” appropriation, while stating their dissatisfaction with the OSE’s closure of the water basin and repression of development. The next hearing before an OSE hearings officer on the Riverbend’s application is January 2024. The issue has been on the current city commission’s executive session agenda under “current and pending litigation” two or three times over the last four years.
The most astonishing display of blaming and not taking responsibility for city management was given by Harrelson. Referring to the city’s water system leaking at least 43 percent of what it pumps due to archaic water pipes not being replaced, Harrelson said the OSE, “should help us with that.”
The OSE will come back for the Oct. 11 meeting to answer further questions from the city commission.
This kind of performance is calculated in my opinion to look good to businesses that may support them. But ultimately I doubt if they’re going to actively proceed to push for more permits in the face of expert testimony and potential legal responses. So amateurish IMO.
Right you are, Ms Sloan. The City Commissions’ for the past probably 7 decades ignored and sent the problems to the “next commission” so as to avoid costing “their” constituents the cost of necessary replacements of infrastructure. Noting that nothing lasts forever the decades old problems must be dealt with now (or maybe later} at the unfortunate expense to current residents. We just have to bite the bullet and pay it forward for future generations (if any) that wish to live in this community (?) .