Residents decry surprise water shutdown

Santa Fe County blames ‘miscommunication’ with city on project

A planned water outage in several subdivisions in Santa Fe County areas west of N.M. 599 caused a kerfuffle among some residents and at least two homeowners association managers on Wednesday, who said they had little official notification of the outage.

It’s tough when your water is cut off, “especially when you are the guy who has to field all the phone calls and you had nothing to do with it,” said Tony Brown, manager of the Aldea de Santa Fe Homeowners Association. Brown said Aldea has 500 residences.

Brown said he was told by the city that the outage was a city project to replace valves associated with the Buckman Direct Diversion treatment plant, which supplies drinking water from the Rio Grande for city and county residents.

The shutoff was necessary to install a meter on a 16-inch line from a tank fed by the Buckman facility, which then supplies the county customers, said city spokesman Matt Ross. “These are all county water customers,” said Ross. “We would never contact county water customers.”

The meter replacement was a city project as part of a city/county agreement put in place after the city annexed part of the county several years ago, said Ross. The agreement calls for a sevenday notice to the county of any water supply interruptions, which Ross said was done.

Although Brown had said the outage was expected to last until about 8 p.m., Ross said at about 4 p.m. water was flowing again to county customers.

According to county officials, the county was notified late last week about the project, however county staff immediately objected to the schedule.

“The county was led to believe the project was on hold until they meet with the city,” to discuss a revised schedule, county spokeswoman Christine Mehilcic said. The county’s concerns were whether the project could be done overnight or if a second line could be installed so service would not be interrupted.

“There obviously was a communications breakdown and we are looking into that” to ensure this doesn’t happen again, she said. Meetings between the two entities are ongoing, she said.

Brown responded “Oh yeah,” when asked if the shutoff had caused consternation. He said he started getting calls at about 9 a.m. Wednesday. “Probably about 30 [calls], so far [as of 2:30 p.m.], just from my residents,” he said.

“This is something they should have known about a long time ago, and they should have notified us in a timely fashion,” said Brown.

He said his “connection at the county” called him about the outage on Tuesday. Among other areas included in the shutoff were Tierra de Oro, La Mariposa, Vista del Monte and La Morada, according to Brown. He had no estimate on the total number of homes that lost water service.

“Every development on the west side of N.M. 599” was affected, said La Morada Homeowners Association manager Ray Kersting.

The city manager’s office confirmed the planned shutoff on Tuesday, but he had no prior awareness, said Kersting, who communicated with Brown on the issue. “They decided nobody needed to be notified and nobody was,” said Kersting, adding he still had a little water at his home on Wednesday afternoon. There are 35 homes in La Morada, he said.

Brown said he was told by a county official, whose name he didn’t have, that “‘there were no notifications, officially.’ ”