The City of Sunland Park approved the creation of a city utility department last week in the wake of Doña Ana County ending the agreement that formed the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority.
The Camino Real Regional Utility Authority supplies treated water to Sunland Park and Santa Teresa. It is currently being sued by the state for an alleged failure to meet water quality standards with arsenic in recent months.
Sunland Park Mayor Javier Perea said that nothing is set in stone yet regarding Sunland Park creating its own city utility department during a Sunland Park city council meeting. He said that this move is to prepare for the possibility that the city will oversee water infrastructure.
“This pushes us towards negotiating as to what we want the service area to look like,” Perea said.
Some of the options include having the city and county split water responsibilities to their own jurisdiction, with either the county or the city taking on responsibility for the whole service area, privatizing those services, or creating another entity to be in charge of the whole service area.
Doña Ana County is currently waiting for reports from a third-party engineering group to learn more about the state of the infrastructure. Once that is completed, Perea says that more concrete ideas will be discussed.
“We understand that there is going to be a lot of need for improvements in the entire system and in the older parts of town, of course,” Perea said. “It’s going to be a lot of work and take some time.”
To help build community trust, Perea said that the city has hired a communications coordinator and is looking to bring on a community coordinator.
Perea said that service will not be interrupted during this process.
In addition to this announcement, the city also set aside $1.2 million to fix three water tanks.
According to CRRUA Executive Director Juan Crosby, sediment builds up at the bottom of the tanks and can enter the distribution system. Once this happens, water delivered to customers can appear discolored. The money will go to removing this sediment and “will help eliminate” that issue.
The removal of sediment will take place in the fall and winter months due to lower water demand during that time, Crosby said.
