A desert nightmare
Cubero streambed to get repair from flash-flood damage

Old Route 66 links the west and east sides of the Cubero Streambed with appropriately named "Water Canyon Road," right, forming a "Y" intersection in Cubero. The large culvert seen at left under the bridge was overflowing with water coming down Water Canyon Road from a 100 years flood in 2006. Jim Tiffin / Independent

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

CUBERO — “We had to get sandbags and put them around our house,” Linda Wright-Armijo said. “The water flooded out our living room and front room.”

The flash flood also inundated the Dixie Bar and washed out part of the east bank of the Cubero Streambed for about 700 feet and part of the bank supporting a bridge on Route 66.

It also flooded across Interstate Highway 40, forcing it to be shut down, said Jimmy Chavez, Cibola County public works director, about the flooding in August 2006 in Cubero.

Flooding is not usually a problem in Cubero. However, this small community was hit with what county officials are calling a “100-year flood” 21 months ago.

The Cubero, a large arroyo just west of most of the homes in the area, was filled to overflowing. The water came down out of the hills and flooded down an appropriately named road, “Water Canyon Road,” through a “Y” intersection and down old Route 66.

Chavez showed the area where flooding damaged stream bank supporting structures of rocks in steel webbing.
Fairly large rocks are immersed in a webbing of steel mesh and then embedded into the side of the stream bank shoring up the side — preventing erosion and protecting the banks from damage by fast moving large objects in floodwaters, such as tree trunks, refrigerators and tires. That is what is supposed to happen. In 2006 it didn't — the water was too swift and too much.

This year the county has approved a $203,891 contract to repair the flood damage, Chavez said.

“I never ever saw so much water in my life,” he said.
Chavez said the “100-year flood” is not really every 100 years. The description is one that fits major storms that produce so much water that it damages structures and steam beds and banks, like the storm did in 2006. The name derives from experts determining how much water would be in a massive storm that would hit every 100 years.

Construction of structures and streambanks are supposed to be such that a 100-year flood does not affect them as much as this flood did. But because there were actually several storms in a few days, that dropped so much rain, it created such flooding that probably nothing could have stopped it, Chavez said.

The contractor will be placing a new state-of-the-art plastic cover filled with dirt onto the stream bank, that should prevent future damage from storms as heavy as hit in 2006, Chavez said.

The new covering is called “Geoweb Bank Protection.”
It is strongly constructed plastic, filled with dirt, with a number of 2 by 2 inch holes, that is embedded into the stream bank, instead of the rocks and steel mesh webbing.

Only about an inch or so of dirt is lost through the top of the holes in the plastic webbing, Chavez said, because of the way the Geobank Protection is constructed.

This allows the steam bank to be protected without damage and the rocks that are embedded in the other type of webbing would not be washed downstream when that webbing is damaged or broken as happened in 2006.

Information: Cibola County Road Department, (505) 285-2570.