By Laura Nesbitt
Mountain View Telegraph
Moriarty almost ran out of water last week.
The water level in the city's 750,000-gallon storage tanks fell 15 inches, or the equivalent of 31,245 gallons, on June 26 between noon and 7 p.m., according to a declaration of water emergency that city councilors unanimously adopted at a special meeting on July 1. The city water system provides water to about 1,765 residents and 134 businesses, the declaration states.
Well 4 failed at about 3 a.m. June 26 but city workers did not discover the failure until about six hours later. It was made operational again later that same evening and was still operating as of Tuesday.
The declaration states that the city will drill an emergency well. The well will be located about 100 feet from Well 2. Well 1 and 2, drilled in the 1960s, are located near City Park and have basically run out of water.
The emergency well will be drilled about 600 feet deep.
“It's pretty easy drilling. We don't have rock formation there, it's just gravel and sandstone. It'll take about three or four days to drill,” said Mayor Adan Encinias.
The city has two other operable wells that produce about 400 gallons of water per minute together.
Well 3, drilled in the mid-80s, is located on Eighth Street and produces about 220 gallons a minute. Well 5, drilled in the late 1990s, is located on Santa Fe Avenue and produces about 180 gallons a minute. Well 4, probably drilled in the 1980s, is located at the end of Broadway and produces about 68 percent of the city's water, Encinias said.
Encinias immediately called the 911 dispatch center when he returned from out of town on June 26 to find out how residents and businesses in the municipality could be contacted. City employees made calls to as many people as possible and requested that they conserve water.
Councilors will use a portion of $500,000 appropriated in 2007 from the legislature for use in water or wastewater to drill the new well.
Encinias expects that a new well will cost the city between $75,000 and $100,000.
“We have to have a second redundant source of water and we have to have it now,” City Attorney Chuck DuMars told councilors on Tuesday.
DuMars will file the resolution with the State Engineer's Office and expects that it will act most probably by early next week.
“I'm hoping that they'll approve it,” DuMars said since the city plans to drill into the same aquifer layer. If the engineer's office does not approve the resolution, the city might have the option to go to district court, but DuMars said he does not expect that to happen.
“Credit has to be given to Mike Tapia (public works supervisor). Who he knows and his years of service. He called drillers and they came. They were in Fort Sumner and in the middle of a job. And to Linda Fischer (clerk-treasurer) and knowing what to do. These are things you can't buy,” Encinias said.
At a Sept. 11 council meeting, Tapia told councilors that Well 1 and 2 had run out of water. The council discussed either relocating or redrilling the two wells.
“We told the State Engineer that this could happen about one month ago,” Encinias said about a meeting he had with DuMars in Santa Fe.
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