By Lynn Janes
On June 25, 2026, the commission had a regular meeting at the city annex building. Alex Brown, chairman, called the meeting to order.
The board approved the agenda and minutes from May 28, 2026.
Old business
Raymond De la Vega, Stantec, had an update for the commission. They had been working on the west side tank location and updated the parcel exhibits on the Stein property and were just waiting to hear back. Stantec has also been working with PNM on permits and waiting to hear from them. Soon they will have 90 percent of the plans ready. New Mexico Environmental Department (NMED) had come back with comments on the documents they received, and the majority had been on the chlorine system and some revisions will be made.
De la Vega said he would be contacting Sheila Hudman, Santa Clara village administrator, concerning the Hanover water stand. He needed to know if the POS (point of sale) system would work for them. They hoped to have the additional well for Santa Clara move forward along with the well for Hurley and will probably be seven to eight weeks out to advertise. These wells will be equipped with lightning protection.
Brown said he and Jacqui Olea, interim town manager, had been meeting with De la Vega and Richard Maynes, Stantec, every other week to keep up on everything.
Stantec had not had a water operators subcommittee meeting at this time.
Brown said the legislative sub-committee had not met but had sent out the draft legislation to everyone for review and asked each to have their attorney review it and give feedback. Brown said he had not had feedback. Laura Phelps, Community Development Manager, Freeport McMoRan, Priscilla Lucero, Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments director, and Brown met with Tony Trujillo and TJ Trujillo to discuss the legislation. They had some concerns about how some things would be questioned and it had been discussed to not be under the Sanitary Projects Act but do an individual approach. Brown said, "I explained exactly how this project is and the fact that it's very important to every community that there be no authority in this project to take over anybody's water system, and that's why we're going this route."
Tony Trujillo brought up that the oil and gas has a type of legislation looking at just pumping and transmission and that will be what they will be doing. It will be an aspect of the legislation that will need to be addressed. It will not be a regional water project because they will not be taking over everyone's water systems.
Senator Gabrielle Ramos and Representative Luis Terrazas both attended and joined in the conversation about the project and legislation needed. This legislation will be introduced at the upcoming session. The legislation needed to be brought before council services to have the language reviewed and the current legislation written would not be what would be presented at the legislature.
Ramos said with respect to the municipalities if their attorneys wanted to look through the current proposed legislation and have suggestions that would be fine. However, the final process will be to present it to the legislative council.
Terrazas had a few questions but agreed with Trujillo and Ramos. His questions had to do with the proposed legislation document and cited the sections. It spoke to boundaries, and he wanted to know what that meant. Phelps said she thought it meant they would provide water to anyone. Alex said it had been written that way to keep it open ended in hopes the authority would grow as the county grows. For now, it includes Bayard, Santa Clara, Hurley, Hanover and Silver City (and water associations associated with them). Hanover will have a water stand so people from all over may use it and at that point they would already be out of boundaries.
At the last meeting Karl Pennock of RCAC (Rural Community Assistance Program), had done a financial analysis on the project. Worst case scenario they would have to borrow $10 million to do the project. The costs will be spread out among the users that would be approximately 10,076 households in Pennock's analysis, but it had not included Pinos Altos that would add another 150. Terrazas wanted to verify that cost would be distributed among those households and Brown said yes. It would include Silver City, Bayard, Hurley, Santa Clara, Hanover, Tyrone, Pinos Altos, Rosedale and Arenas Valley. Terrazas wanted to know if that would be done through a water rate increase. Brown said yes but it would be a fixed cost. In the analysis the worst case scenario would be a debt of $10 million and that would be about a $5.70 increase to each water bill. Brown added that he didn't think they would owe that much.
Trujillo suggested they be put on the agenda for the meeting of the Water and Natural Resource Department. They will be meeting in Socorro in September. It would provide time to present the legislation to counsel services for the language.
Lucero wanted Indira Aguirre, Rural Community Assistance Corporation, to bring some questions she had forward on some language in the current legislation draft. She has worked with water systems all over the state. She had redlined some of the areas and it had been forwarded to Melendrez and Melendrez P.C. in Albuquerque. She went over an area that spoke to wastewater and this project would not include wastewater. She brought up a few areas that the language needed to be changed in relation to additional households coming into the system. Aguirre continued with a few other items.
Lucero went over the funding priorities and had heard a lot of updates the past week. Water Trust Board funds will not require legislative authorization any longer. Something they had not done in the past; they will start doing applications for design projects only. It will be for ones that already have a PER (preliminary engineering report) that they already have and it will be 100 percent funding. In August they will be applying for Water Trust Board funding to do construction. Lucero continued with what would be coming up that they had to put in applications for such as the New Mexico Unit fund and Colonias. All would be coming up quickly.
They spoke to all the different funding opportunities and how all have different rules and none of them knew each other's rules. This had caused delays and problems with projects Lucero has worked on. Terrazas pointed out that each year they added to the rules and compounding the problem has been staff turnover. Each staff member will interpret the rules differently stifling and holding up funding.
Trujillo pointed out some challenges they would be facing with a new administration and selling them on the project.
Lucero and Phelps talked about the possibility to obtain waivers for Colonias funding, they have a 10 percent match. Lucero said not currently but it could change. She spoke to the municipalities being maxed out on their debt capacity. She suggested maybe Bosque Advisors could provide an analysis on the participants in the water commission's debt. It would be covered by the technical assistance funding they already had. This could be used to prove the need for waivers.
The water commission will be doing presentations to the municipalities and will start with the Grant County Commissioners to provide an update on the project. They had heard a lot of misinformation being spoken on the project. Trujillo suggested some other meetings for them to attend and provide a presentation on the project.
Both Ramos and Terrazas invited everyone to feel free to come talk to them at their office in First New Mexico Bank.
They all discussed that they should start doing a community outreach on the project to educate and inform the community of what the project consists of and how it has progressed. It will also help all the newly elected officials understand the project.
Ramos has some questions about RCAC and Aguirre explained they cover thirteen western states and are a federal nonprofit. They also cover the entire nation. Lucero added that since she had become director, RCAC had turned out to be a great partner and had a high level of expertise.
Next meeting will be July 23, 2026, at 3:00 pm (tentative)
Adjourned
