Ski valley water crisis abates

Village eyes capital outlay, residents ask for rate increase

Officials said Tuesday (Jan. 24) that nearly all residences have water again in the Village of Taos Ski Valley.

“I will tell you that our green tank is 85 percent full as of this morning, and our Kachina tank is a little bit less than half-full; and our pump is working to continue filling that Kachina tank,” Councilor and Mayor Pro-tem Tom Wittman said during Tuesday afternoon’s regular meeting of the Village of Taos Ski Valley Council. “Some good news: The Phoenix had water, although limited as of yesterday, and the more water we get into the Kachina tank, the sooner that place will be able to have their bathrooms open.

“Wheeler Peak condos, there was a rumor kicking around that they didn’t have any water anymore, and that is not true,” Wit

tman said. “They should have water as I am speaking today.”

A major leak at a single home on Dec. 28 caused the system to lose pressure, according to officials, launching a weeks-long crisis during one of the ski valley’s busiest times of the year. Although the village isn’t out of the woods yet, public works crews, specialist contractors and the patience of residents has inched the crisis toward resolution.

Trudy DiLeo, chair of the Village of Taos Ski Valley Public Safety Committee, said there were lessons to be learned from the catastrophe. Mainly, she said, accessible water shut off valves should be required by ordinance to be installed at all existing homes, not just those built in the future.

Wittman said the council would discuss such an ordinance and asked property owners to reach out to the village if they need help locating shutoff valves.

DiLeo also noted that property owners in the ski valley should be well aware of the need to insulate pipes in winter so they don’t freeze and break.

“When sudden water pressure goes down from an undetected leak, tanks empty, pumps fail, air pockets form in pipes and lines at multiple sites throughout the village need to be dug up and flushed — and as we have just witnessed many times this has to be done in blizzard conditions, putting out public works employees at increased risk,” DiLeo said. “It can take many days or weeks, lots of manpower and substantial expense with tanks to fill again in the system to get back functioning properly before everyone has the normal waterslide supply restored.

“Major water losses affect the entire community, in some households, catastrophically; many of our neighbors have not had water since December 28,” DiLeo continued. “Others didn’t have water for two or three weeks. Additionally, if there had been a building fire during this outage, there would have been a delay in fighting it waiting to fill tanker trucks and for fire crews to come from neighboring towns.”

Later in Tuesday’s meeting, DiLeo was appointed to represent the ski valley on the Holy Cross Medical Center board of directors nominating committee.

Wittman noted that the village has several irons in the fire with regard to funding opportunities to address its water system deficiencies, including high hopes for capital outlay funding that could result from this year’s legislative session. Legislators are again dealing with a record amount of surplus revenue, some of which they will allocate to projects within their districts.

“We have a $750,000 grant to start digging up water lines this summer, if we can get around that,” Wittman said. “And capital outlay requests we made both to [District 6 N.M. Sen.] Bobby Gonzales and our [District 42 N.M.] Representative Ortez, we were asking for $1.25 million; after recent conversations with the governor, we’ve increased that amount to ask for $5 million.

“And I’m pretty hopeful about that from our governor,” Wittman added. “I had a conversation with her in September, a personal conversation for about 10 minutes, and she realized that $750,000 wasn’t enough for what we needed to do. What’s the most important part of the underground lines, the fix, is to hopefully get our percentage of lost water down from 70-to-80 percent to something more reasonable, like 25 percent.”

The village has had a Water Master Plan since December 2021 that Wittman said Planning and Community Development Director Patrick Nicholson is now tasked with turning into “our water plan for the village.”

In his report, Village Administrator John Avila said that Taos Ski Valley, Inc. is “already started” on a project, for which it is banking on largely being repaid through the village’s Tax Increment Development District, to purchase and install seven main water meters. The meters are intended to help the village determine where the most problematic lines are with regard to leaks.

“That queue for getting that equipment had to be filled already so those pieces of equipment can be in place in the summer,” Avila said, adding that, due to the recent flurry of activity — among public works and a private contractor hired to identify acute system deficiencies — “hopefully we have some better locations on where these leaks are.”

Avila also said the New Mexico Environment Department informed him that the village, having “paid off a $500,000 loangrant with them,” can once again access the low-interest loans available through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund.

During the public comments portion of Tuesday’s meeting, several residents expressed frustration with the system failures, but also praised the municipalities’ public works crew.

“My wife and I would like to express our gratitude to [Public Works Director] Anthony Martinez and his team at the Public Works Department who have worked tirelessly to restore water service in the upper village area,” said resident Ben Cook, adding that crews were to be seen working “late into the night over the New Year’s holiday when I’m sure they would have preferred to have been with their families and patiently fielding a barrage of questions from village residents.”

But communications between village officials and residents could be better, according to Cook.

“The village largely relies on email,” he said. “We need more timely communications for future emergencies. A text-based community notification system, I think, would be relatively easy and inexpensive to implement.”

Cook added that businesses within the central ski valley business district should be prepared to conserve water in case of future emergencies, if only to help maintain water pressure in fire hydrants in other parts of the valley, and also suggested that the village must raise water and sewer rates in order to maintain its systems.

“My understanding is that the village’s current water and wastewater treatment operations are not self-supported by the money that’s collected through the current rate structure,” he said. “Significant funds are going to be needed to repair and improve the water system, which is going to further strain village budgets which are already overextended. I want to encourage village leadership to consider whether an increase in water rates is needed to raise repair funds and maintain robust operations.”

Amizette resident Michael Fitzpatrick, who sits on the village’s Capital Improvement Advisory Committee, agreed with Cook, advising officials that the village “need[s] to conserve cash, look for other [funding] sources and also increase transparency so that everyone in the village understands where we are financially so we can be realistic about what we can accomplish.”

In other ski valley news, Peter Talty, vice president of Belvedere Property Management, a development company owned by Taos Ski Valley owner Louis Bacon, announced there will be a public information meeting regarding the new complex intended to house the Mogul Medical Center, TSV, Inc. offices and, if all goes according to plans, the village post office and municipal firehouse.

“The meeting will occur Saturday, Jan.y 28, at 3 p.m. in the Lake Fork Room, which sits above ski sales right next to the ice rink for those of you not familiar with Lake Fork Room,” Talty said. “What we thought we would do is I would discuss the history of the project, the acquisition of the land, and how locating mobile medical, firehouse, U.S. postal post office surrounding the existing village offices establishes a centralized administrative, fire and life-safety core that’s easily accessed throughout the village.”

In addition to the architect of the project and Chaz Rockey, TSV, Inc. chief financial officer, “fire personnel and EMS staff will also be available to discuss the benefits of the project from their perspective,” Talty said. “This is an in-person meeting.”