Thoreau seeks help for water problems

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — The McKinley County Commission agreed Tuesday to come to the aid of Thoreau residents who have been plagued with water well problems for the past few weeks.

For several days, parts of the community were without water and officials for the county school system were forced to call off school at Thoreau Elementary for three days while the problem was corrected.

A report to the commission said the problem was with one of the community’s two wells.

With the first well working all right and producing about 60 gallons of water per minute, the problems centered around the second well which was slowly filling up with silt, sand and gravel, forcing the Thoreau Water and Sanitation District to shut it down for several days to clean it out.

"The well was air-lifted to a depth of 720 feet and a new 25 horsepower pump was installed at 325 feet," said the report. "This is only a temporary fix."

What the community wants, said Harry Botkin, an official of the water district, is a new well because the problem is expected to arise again.

He explained that the Thoreau community uses about 2.7 million gallons of water in its lowest month and the well that has been working well only produces about 2.5 million gallons a month so it can’t keep up with the demand by itself when the demand is the lowest, much less when it peaks during the summer at 4.2 million gallons.

So the community has been looking at replacing that second well for several years and in 1998, it was estimated that a new well would cost $404,000. County Commission Chairman Dave Dallago estimated that means the well today would cost about $750,000.

Water district officials said they were trying to find the funds to pay for the new well and County Manager Tom Trujillo told the commission that county officials have found $100,000 in the county’s budget that could be used for this purpose.

The idea is that the community could go to its state legislators and seek other funds to pay for the cost of the new well.

The commission agreed at the end of the discussion to help out the Thoreau community and to bring the matter up again at its next meeting. It didn’t allocate the $100,000 at Tuesday’s meeting but members indicated that this would occur at the next meeting.

The commission also took up a request from residents in the Borrego Pass area who wanted the commission’s help to pave and improve a 1.8 mile section of County Road 19 that is adjacent to the Borrego Pass School.

Community members said the road’s conditions are really bad when it snows and rains and is a hazard to the safety of the children who are bused in and out of the school during the school year.

The commission agreed to do what it could to help the effort by supporting the community’s efforts to get state funding for road improvements.

Trujillo said the state has given the county $100,000 to improve County Road 19 and part of this could be used to provide some help. It all can’t be used, he said, since the county has agreed to improve part of another section of the road near Casamero Lake.

Another request for help from the county came from residents of the Catalpa Hills subdivision to wanted the county to maintain the subdivision roads.

The commission turned this request down at the recommendation of the county’s planning board which recommended it be rejected because the roads do not meet county standards.