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Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Water Pipeline Idea Gets SF Officials' Attention

By Adam Rankin
Journal Staff Writer
    A proposal to pump slightly brackish water from the Estancia Basin to Santa Fe has gained the ear of city officials, who passed on a similar proposal last year.
    City Councilor David Coss said the primary difference between the two proposals is that the new one has an existing water right, while the other is still trying to gain rights from the Office of the State Engineer, which is why the city decided against pursuing it.
    "The city, responsibly, needs to be looking at as many options as we can" to meet the city's growing water needs, Coss said.
    The competing proposals are controversial because they are expensive, involve the complication of transferring water from one basin to another and pumping the ground water could impact senior water rights holders.
    The newest proposal, announced by Mayor Larry Delgado last week, is to import about 5.6 million gallons of Estancia ground water a day through a 65-mile pipeline at a cost of about $27 million to the city. The slightly saline water would be pumped from wells on farmland near Estancia and treated using reverse osmosis.
    Total infrastructure costs for the project are estimated at about $100 million and, if approved, water delivery wouldn't begin until 2010 or 2012, according to city officials.
    Sierra Waterworks, a limited-liability company formed by a group of ranchers who own two farms and the water rights, would retain a 49 percent stake in the land and water; the city would gain a 51-percent interest in the 8,702 acres and 7,200 acre-feet of water rights. An acre-foot of water is 325,851 gallons.
    State Engineer John D'Antonio said there is nothing in state law that would prevent the transfer of water between basins, but added that he expects the proposal to be protested.
    "I think it is going to be a matter of economics, more than anything," he said, about whether Santa Fe decides to pursue the proposal.
    Coss said his biggest concerns are the cost and the sustainability of the water resource, expected to last 40 years if pumped at 7,000 acre-feet a year.
    "I expect it is going to be fairly controversial," he said. "This one may just be too expensive."
    Calls to John Cyle Sharp, president of Sierra Waterworks, were not returned on Tuesday.
    The proposal is similar in some ways to one made two years ago by The Resource Solutions Group, a company of four Santa Fe businessmen and engineers, including former State Engineer Eluid Martinez.
    That plan, which requires acquiring a new water right in the Estancia Basin, is to tap a brackish water zone on the eastern margin of the basin, pump the water to the surface, desalinate it and pipe it to Santa Fe for about $4 per 1,000 gallons, Martinez said.
    So far, the Office of the State Engineer has been unwilling to grant the water right. Then-State Engineer Tom Turney denied the request in 2002, citing a 1950s determination that pumping brackish water could harm existing fresh-water wells.
    The group resubmitted its application last year with a proposal to pump 12,500 acre-feet a year— a 50 percent reduction to avoid affecting other water rights users.
    Martinez said the state engineer won't consider the Resource Solutions Group application further until his company gets a customer for the water and access to land for the proposed wells.
    "Our application is still pending with the State Engineer," he said. "We have begun discussions with landowners on easement rights and are contacting government entities that could be served by this water."
    Martinez said there could be room for both projects and that more agricultural water users may decide to sell their water rights to Santa Fe or other municipalities if the pipeline is built.
    But he questioned the economic feasibility of approving a project with $100 million in infrastructure costs for only 7,000 acre-feet of water that will last about four decades, when his group could provide 12,500 acre-feet of water sustainably.
    "It concerns me that the cost of water in this city is getting outrageous, and it is going to continue to be outrageous," he said. "We're looking at horrendous increases in water rates."