By Deanna Archuleta
Chair, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority
The Journal editorial "Water Board Rationale Hard One To Swallow" demands "clarity" about the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority's bottled water distribution program, but it really muddies the water.
The Journal's suggestion that the "same system" that produced a handful of contaminated bottles will become our community's primary source of drinking water is misleading and needlessly casts a shadow over a project of vital importance to this community.
The truth is that all the water produced at our pilot treatment facility is tested before bottling and every batch has been shown to meet health and safety requirements. The pilot plant duplicates on a smaller scale the treatment process to be used when the San Juan-Chama Drinking Water Project comes online later this year.
The bottled water program has produced more than 900,000 bottles of San Juan-Chama Drinking Water, allowing our customers to preview the purified surface water that soon will be coming from their taps. When some of those bottles turned up with foreign matter in them, the Water Authority took immediate steps to suspend the bottled water program and inform the public of the situation.
Because of our testing protocols, we were confident that any contamination of the water must have occurred after its delivery to the bottler.
Confirmation of this came in a compliance review completed this week by the New Mexico Environment Department, which reports that "all monitoring requirements have been completed with the results of all analyses meeting or exceeding all federal and state drinking water standards."
This, coupled with the bottler's own admission in the Journal that our water was clean when it arrived at his plant, clearly indicates that the contamination issue originated outside of the Water Authority's control and was not related to our treatment process.
Mayor Martin Chávez, who was briefed on this situation as were all water board members, has called for an emergency meeting of the Water Authority board. He has also asked for an independent review of the water treatment process.
While we have not ruled out the possibility of further independent review, NMED has already provided an independent analysis and given the treatment process a clean bill of health. Furthermore, we have submitted samples of the suspect water to an independent, EPA-certified lab to determine the nature of the contamination.
In light of these measures, and the fact that the bottling operation has now come to an end, there is no need to expend additional ratepayer resources on a special meeting.
For now, we must continue to move confidently forward with implementation of the San Juan-Chama Drinking Water Project. The bottled water program was intended not as a "promotional gimmick" but as a means of educating the public about this project, which represents a profound change for area residents.
At $400 million, it's also an expensive change. Considering the level of investment, it is appropriate that we take steps to inform our ratepayers of what they're getting for the money— and what they can expect to be drinking in less than a year. That's what the bottled water program was all about.
The bottling may be over, but the process of raising public awareness is just beginning, and we thank the media for their assistance as we deliver the news. We also look forward to providing further opportunities for people in our service area to sample the new (un-bottled) drinking water at events around the community. That water is of the highest quality and represents years of tireless effort by countless people to provide us with a sustainable supply for our children and grandchildren.
That will continue to be our clear message moving forward.
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