McKinley County Water Board
M I N U T E S
McKinley
County Commissioners Chambers
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Paulene McCabe Manuelito
Chapter
Rhonda Berg RRMF
Sherry Botkin Thoreau Water
& Sanitation District
Loline Hathaway Yah-ta-hey
Water & Sanitation District
Michael Daly White Cliffs MDWUA
facilitators/staff:
Evan Williams Northwest NM
Council of Governments
Jeff Kiely Northwest NM Council
of Governments
Larry Winn McKinley County Soil
& Water Conservation District
Marc Edwards Water Consultant
Ernest Becenti County
Commissioner
Evan Williams gave a quick overview of the proposal from Joe Diaz regarding the old ARCO water rights in Cibola County and the possibilities of entering into a joint governmental water bank with Cibola and McKinley County governments. Jeff Kiely detailed the broader concepts in this projects, and what a regional water bank and/or board could mean for the area residents. This group could be tasked with pooling all existing water rights into a bank for public and/or private use.
Ernest Becenti discussed his opinion on the future of water and how the County of McKinley should be proactive in its efforts to secure and purchase water rights. He further explained how this tied to economic development.
Marc Edwards gave his opinion on these proposed water rights. His gut feeling was that if any wet water was real – that Albuquerque would have acquired it a long time ago. He had done primarily investigations at the State Engineer’s Office to render a hydrologists opinion on these rights; no such opinion was found. Marc Edwards told the Board that if they really wanted to pursue this claim that they lobby a State Legislator to appropriate or ask that the State Engineer’s Office research this claim as a line-item in their budget. They would need the water source to sustain pressure for at least 20 years to determine this as a worthwhile source. Marc Edwards also mentioned that it might be necessary or prudent to send a letter to Senators Bingamen and Domenici to ask them to review this claim, which they could easily appropriate USGS or Bureau of Reclamation to do a study.
The Board agreed that careful and light action needed to take place on this issue, thus:
1. The
Board would script a letter, based on the recommendation that was already
presented to the County Commission, to send to Cibola County determining
interest in pursuing this claim to the next level.
2. Mike Daly agreed to script a letter to Joe Diaz requesting more water testing, a hydrological study of his rights to how long they would last with pressure, and more information on the 12’ pipeline that he described in a previous meeting.
Mike Daly
described the process the Water Board took in presenting their recommendation
to the County Commission.
Evan Williams also mentioned that
a case between EPA and HRI was in progress, one that the COG had offered a
letter regarding, which he felt the Board should follow. The case was to determine if the Churchrock
site (Unit 8) should be considered “Indian Country” and thus fall under the
purview and regulatory standards of EPA, or if not, fall under the purview of
the State EMNRD.
Marc
Edwards discussed his background and described his years on Bingamen’s staff
lobbying and staffing water legislation, and that he had worked with Jeff Kiely
on the Region 6 Water Plan for this area.
He
described that the Water Trust Fund, which was organized to act as leverage for
Federal funding on huge, regional infrastructure projects, such as,
Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project was never capitalized. This session Marc and others are working on
legislation that would capitalize this account. Marc Edwards was looking for support Statewide on this
initiative.
Rhonda
Berg moved, and Loline Hathaway seconded a motion to support the resolution
that Marc Edwards presented the Board, and to advocate for its passage at the
next County Commission meeting.
Larry
Winn asked about the Legislative strategy in NM and at the Federal level for
NGWSP.
Mike Daly asked why the NGWSP could not use Animas-La Plata project as the
example of phasing in a project that was also “never going to happen”, and how
about building alternatives to delay a water crisis by developing the
reverse-osmosis capacity in the mean time.
Larry
Winn agreed and stated that NGWSP was using that very approach, and the example
he referred to was the phased build-out of the Gallup Regional System in
relationship to the NGWSP.
Marc
Edwards described that the NGWSP is also being phased and
right now is funded to start with infrastructure build out in the Cutter
Lateral portion of the project near Eastern McKinley County. He also discussed the G-22 application that
the City of Gallup is submitting, which needs Navajo Nation support. Finally, he stated the unique and complex
partnership that exists on NGWSP that includes the City, State, and Navajo
Nation.
Larry
Winn added that the NGWSP still needed a 75% Federal cost share, and that the
City is moving forward on complimentary water solutions and strategies
including an application to the State Engineer’s Office for G-22 and the City
has purchased lands west of the wastewater plant for evaporation ponds for a RO
plant. He added that the City Council
supports these projects.
The
Board then discussed the Cibola Water Rights Purchase again in the context of
NGWSP. Mike Daly discussed how that 12’
pipeline if it existing could be a great asset in the build out of this project
or in the perceptive of a County-wide, regional system.
Evan
Williams asked Marc Edwards to describe the regional planning activities and
legislation at the State level. Marc
Edwards stated that the regional plans (in our case – Region 6) need
implementation funding and that Marc and others are soliciting State support to
do so along with the Interstate Stream Commission. He also mentioned that regionalization work also needs funding to
help local governments acquire the capacity to do so.
Evan
Williams announced to Marc Edwards that the County just yesterday signed a
resolution to support regionalization efforts in McKinley County, and are in
full support of funding for local communities to do so.
Evan
Williams presented a list of legislative water & wastewater projects as
prioritized by the Board a year ago with Marc DePauli. He also pointed to the funding on that list
that is being requested to do regionalization, which would match any monies
that Marc Edwards’ efforts could produce.
Project is 75% designed by Marc DePauli, who has layed out the project. This will get us funding through 2006 and we would re-apply in 2007.
B. Wetlands Restoration Grant - Larry Winn discussed the Soil & Water Conservation District’s grant for the Rio Puerco restoration project.
C. CDBG Planning Grant - Mike Daly and Loline Hathaway still needed to meet with Marc DePauli and get a copy of this plan, but at first glance they felt this plan probably did not meet their needs. Larry Winn suggested the Board re-visit the oversight of this project.
Evan
Williams, Associate Planner
Northwest
NM Council of Governments