Tampico Springs plan vies for water

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — It took the McKinley County Commission more than two hours of discussion but in the end, they agreed to approved the preliminary plat for Tampico Springs, a recreational subdivision being planned for southern McKinley County.

Zuni Tribal Gov. Norman Cooeyate, who attended the meeting, went away “disappointed” that the commission failed to incorporate any of their concerns in their resolution but said he and the tribe would continue fighting to make sure that the developers of the project adhere to their promises to stay within limitations on how much water their development will use.

Water was one of the main subjects that came up as the commission listened to people speak out about the proposal that could ultimately bring several hundred families in the summer to live in expensive homes built on land northeast of the Zuni Reservation.

County Attorney Doug Decker says this is the largest subdivision that has been proposed in the county in the 12 years he has been a county official. If the developers, who are from the Phoenix area, are successful in getting the development up and running and are able to sell all the homes they are proposing, county officials say it could bring in tens of thousands of dollars in extra taxes to the county.

But for right now, the developers, who go by the name Tampico Springs 3000, are trying to get preliminary approval from the county so they can start developing their plans.

Jay Mason, the developer’s attorney, urged the commission to be sympathetic to the plight of his clients who already have spent several hundred thousand dollars to get the project to this stage and will have to spend even more before the commission is ready to give its final approval.

Members of the county’s Smart Growth Commission — the county’s version of Gallup’s planning and zoning commission, have spent months meeting with the developers and others in connection with the project and presented their findings to the commission on Tuesday.
In its findings, the commission said that the developers have “adequately demonstrated sufficient water availability” through a water study the developers paid for.

The Zuni Pueblo did its own water survey and according to attorneys for the Zunis, their study did not come to the same conclusion as the developer’s study did. For this reason, the Zuni Pueblo tried to get the commission to use its influence to get the state water engineer to take notice of the Zuni study and make this part of the state analysis of the water situation in the county.

The commission, however, failed to do this.

The commission also failed to act on the tribe’s request to make sure that the developers stayed within the water usage that developers proposed — 51.6 acre feet per year — by requiring that the people they sold the lots to would have to place meters on their water wells and then report to someone annually how much water they used.

The developers at first had reservations about this since state law does not require single family wells to be metered, only those wells that are shared, but in the end Mason said developers would agree to make that a requirement for anyone who buys a lot. However, he added, the developers couldn’t force anyone to report their usage because state law doesn’t require it and there is no one to enforce it even if it is required.

Samuel Gollis, the Albuquerque attorney representing the Zunis, said the developer’s concession didn’t mean anything.

“If you don’t require them to report their annual usages,” he said, “requiring them to have a meter on their well is meaningless.”

In the end, the commission agreed to go along with the recommendations by the Smart Growth Commission which the developers said they would go along with.
Mason said the developers only had two modifications of the Smart Growth’s recommendations, the most major dealing with when the developers would have to have an environmental impact statement done on the access road into the proposed development.

The Smart Growth Commission wanted it done before final plat approval was given but Mason pointed out that this would cost the developers $25,000 up front and another $25,000 before it was completed and it wasn’t fair to require this when there was a chance that the final approval would not be given.

He asked that the commission agree to postpone this until after the final plat approval was given and the commission agreed to go along with it.

None of the Zuni Pueblo’s concerns were addressed by the county commission and Cooeyate said he was “disappointed” in the commission, vowing to bring these issues up again when the matter comes before the commission for further approvals.

Dave Dallago, who was elected chairman of the commission Tuesday, said this was only the preliminary approvals and there would be time to address the concerns that the Zunis and others had about the development.