Truth or Consequences, under new City Manager Gary Whitehead’s leadership, is getting real and upfront and credible and fact-based and communicative about its water problems.
At the March 12 city commission meeting, Whitehead introduced Jamie Foreman as the city’s future or “new water director, if you will,” once she completes greater water-operator accreditation. For now, Whitehead said, she has the “interim supervisor position over water.”
Foreman was brought into the department about two years ago by previous water/wastewater director Arnie Castaneda to address compliance and reporting and data collecting requirements. Castaneda was director for two years, retiring January 2025. He had been with the water department for many years and had retired, but was enticed to come out of retirement, but has now retired again. Foreman’s duties expanded beyond compliance under Castaneda, and her abilities have made her integral to the department in a few short years.
Like war, the city’s various water crises have created opportunities to rapidly advance–if one shows leadership and competence under fire.
Foreman gave a concise report that hit all the harder for its brevity and salience.
The most important fact she gave was that “the city is losing 35 to 40 percent of its water compared to 59 percent this same time last year.”
Water loss gives the best quick overview of the seriousness of the city’s water problem and how far we have come and how far we have to go in fixing it. Foreman is the first city water director to give that fact.
During previous-City Manager Bruce Swingle’s tenure, from May 2020 to May 2023, he often cited a 2019 Wilson & Company engineering report that showed the city was losing 43 percent of the water it pumped. Swingle’s honesty was refreshing. The city manager before that, Morris Madrid, denied that statistic, claiming the city was only losing about 19 percent of the water it pumped, never explaining how he arrived at that conclusion and never bringing a Wilson & Co. engineer before the people and city commission to explain its supposed 24 percent error.
Castaneda claimed last summer the city was only losing about 25 percent of its water, even going so far as to tell that to the Legislative Finance Committee when it was compiling data for a report on water and wastewater infrastructure costs. I sought records to verify his claim, finding instead that the city lost 41 percent of its water last August and nearly 70 percent of its water last September, as reported here:
Now we are back to truth-telling with Foreman, with the added bonus of real-time reporting.
The city has been addressing massive water leaks since 2019 and the needle has gone way past the baseline 43-percent loss to as high as at least 70 percent and now back down to 35 to 40 percent.
Foreman said, “the goal is 10 percent,” and under her and Whitehead’s leadership, I believe it will happen sooner than under prior leadership, because they are tracking it and reporting it and keeping it top-of-mind.
Misrepresenting the amount of water loss to the LFC, either due to ineptness or dishonesty, is disgraceful and counter productive.
Please explain why the pipes that leak on fourth ave., headed west toward the senior center, community center, the library, tennis courts, the community garden, the commission building — why can’t that stretch of street be “fixed” since it seems to be an important entrance to a group of buildings — a first appearance, first impression of Truth or Consequences. It’s always flooded! Why is that?!? It’s an embarrassment to have that street unpaved, and torn up. No sense of community pride!
New City Manager Gary Whitehead asked the water/wastewater staff to come up with a protocol for fixing leaks, which pretty much matches the protocol that has been followed for the last two and a half years or so: Fix gushers first, fix what you can after that. If a leak has been fixed twice in the same spot, try to find the funds, time and energy to rip out 50 feet or so of pipe and put it in for a more permanent fix.
Basically the whole system is falling apart at once. That’s the problem. The city doesn’t have the manpower, money, parts, equipment to fix everything at once. I assume 4th Ave. isn’t a gusher?
I should add why the pipes break in the same spot, or really, probably 10 feet away or so. The persistence of a leak on 4th Street may actually be breaks about 10 feet apart or so or many breaks. Imagine a weak, decaying pipe. It springs a leak. You did up the street, put in a “patch” over the leak, which is a plastic sleeve about a foot or two long the same circumference as the pipe. Cover hole. Turn water back on. The pressure in the system is wacky and hard to control and not computerized and either too great or too weak and the city doesn’t know where some of the valves are that turn on or turn off the water. So, you turn the water on and, boom, big pressure down the pipe. The old pipe ten feet away from the patch breaks. The general observer thinks the city didn’t fix the leak, when it did.
The other reason that 4th Ave. leak might be persistently unfixed: The city, as you can imagine, has had a lot of trouble keeping staff on the water and wastewater department, since its emergency after emergency and a lot of hard labor and bad hours at a not very competitive rate. And, all across the country it’s hard to find certified water and wastewater operators. Not a popular field. If the leak on 4th is more than 4 feet deep, rules require a certified operator at a certain level to oversee the work, because a coffer dam has to be built, bigger equipment has to be brought in, etc. The city can’t do the work. Although it has two staff members who are nearly certified at required levels. Currently the city hires SmithCo, of Caballo, to do the work. I don’t know how long it takes to schedule that work.
Third reason a leak may be persistent: Money. Costs about $50K to fix 100 feet of pipe or so. The water rate money comes in monthly. The city probably has a monthly budget for leaks. But that’s something I should ask about.