One Southern New Mexico community has found a solution to a problem facing many towns similar in size, and it could potentially unlock millions in federal dollars to help with local infrastructure.
On the Lower Rio Grande, between Las Cruces and El Paso, industrial cattle feedlots line Interstate 10. There are pecan groves that butt right up to the river, and there are water tanks – lots of them.
They hold water that sustains nearby residents and agriculture.
Many communities there are colonias, or areas near the U.S.-Mexico border that have historically lacked safe and reliable water, sewers and housing.
“Budwieser, one time, donated canned water,” Martin Lopez said, laughing.
Lopez manages the Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority, which serves 16 communities, mostly colonias, in Doña Ana County.
He stood at a new pump behind the authority’s main office in Berino, NM with projects manager Karen Nichols and Espy Holguin, the chair of the utility’s board.
“Back in the old days, it was possible, and happened more than once, for a community to be entirely without water if a well went down,” Nichols said.
That would lead to water being trucked in by the government in tanks.
“I was party to the National Guard bringing in water buffaloes because some of the communities didn’t have water,” Lopez said.
The trouble didn’t stop there. Several communities here had high levels of arsenic in the water, and groundwater that was often brackish or too salty.
“If you're the City of El Paso, you can afford a brackish water treatment plant,” Nichols said. “If you're little bitty us, not so much.”
The water issues also cause problems for fire protection, which leads to more problems for homeowners, Holguin said.
“So you build a home and your insurance is about three times more,” she said.
People hauled in water and paid high fees and lived with local water that Nichols calls “nasty,” or redrilled wells.
Those communities - which include Berino, Vado, Mesquite, La Mesa, Anthony and others - went to state and federal governments for help.
"We saw ourselves in Santa Fe always competing with each other for the limited funds,” Lopez said.
They were told by lawmakers to come back once they had teamed up.
Nearly 40% of the drinking water systems in New Mexico serve dozens, hundreds or just a few thousand people.
Those systems often lack access to funds and capacity to keep everything in working order.
If they don’t have the people, know-how or support to apply for grants and loans through the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, that giant chunk of money does them little good.
New Mexico gave communities the option to form mutual domestic water consumers associations in the 1940s in an effort to bring up the quality of drinking water and raise life spans in the state. The state holds these groups responsible for a number of tasks, including reporting water use and quality, paying taxes and holding open meetings.
But those tasks are hard to keep up with – many of them are run entirely by volunteers. And now, they’re dealing with aging infrastructure and more frequent water scarcity.
One solution gaining ground is to simply make those systems bigger by combining them.
“Communities that build capacity, those are the ones that are successful,” said Ramon Lucero, field manager for the Rural Community Assistance Corporation, a nonprofit that provides technical assistance for rural water systems across the Western U.S.
He works with water systems to meet regulatory requirements and helps them navigate options like this to fund desperately needed projects.
He said that on their own, many small water systems don’t have the capacity to do the work that’s required.
“Sometimes because they’re so busy, we might have all the technical assistance available to help them, but they just don’t have the ability to respond,” Lucero said.
Andy Burke with the U.S.Department of Agriculture said it’s not just a problem in New Mexico.
“A lot of the entities that we deal with in rural America are understandably small,” he said. “They have lots of area to cover and they may not have a lot of financial resources to do that.”
That’s why he says the USDA often encourages rural utilities to team up and split resources. That way, they can hire one accountant, lawyer, whoever they might need between them, save money and work more efficiently, Burke said.
“But there are other places where maybe it's not right for them because of topographical issues or whatever is going on in terms of not having a common idea between the different communities,” Burke said.
Back in Berino, the team at the water authority said combining water utilities made sense, but it took years to get the community on board.
Many had concerns about keeping their water rights and prices going up.
Now, they’ve actually lowered prices and are taking on projects they never thought they’d be able to afford, like the new pump that’s bringing in a more consistent supply of water.
Working as one combined authority gave them the time and capacity to apply for loans and grants to complete the water pump project that will help the 16 communities.
And now, state lawmakers are looking to replicate their work. Earlier this year, the legislature passed the Regional Water System Resiliency Act, which provided a framework for small communities to create shared utilities. The Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority was a model for that legislation.
“We've gone from being the miner’s canary to the guinea pig,” Nichols said. “Now, we're the poster child.”
This coverage is a collaboration with Source New Mexico and is part of a series made possible by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Water Desk at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
