State engineer, developer on hook for $380K in legal fees

A 2nd District Court judge ordered a developer and the State Engineer’s Office to jointly foot $379,854.05 in expert witness fees and costs in a long-running case over a denied development.

Judge Clay Campbell reaffirmed a 2019 decision that the State Engineer’s Office and developer Aquifer Science LLC, were jointly liable, rejecting arguments from the state agency’s lawyers that it was a “non-aligned” party.

In 2013, the State Engineer’s Office denied a water permit for a proposed 3,990-home resort community development called Campbell Ranch near Sandia Park and said there was not enough water to support the application.

A coalition of local residents opposed the permit, contending the development would put existing communities in peril.

Campbell Ranch requested its permit through Aquifer Science LLC, a partnership between developers and Carson City, Nev., water rights developer Vidler Water Co. Developers appealed the State Engineer’s Office’s decision in 2014, and new State Engineer Tom Blaine backed developers.

In a September ruling, Campbell denied the permit, writing it was “inconsistent with applicable principles of conservation and because the magnitude of the likely impairment to existing water rights is significant,” and named both Aquifer Science LLC and the State Engineer’s Office liable for court costs.

Attorney Paul Hultin, representing San Pedro Creek Estates, one of the groups that fought the development, said in a statement the judge’s award of fees was “based on the Court’s findings that the State Engineer was not a neutral party advocating for the protection of New Mexico’s precious groundwater and the best interests of the people of New Mexico.”