East Mountains community promised more dollars for water and wastewater system

An East Mountains community is $2.5 million closer to a reliable drinking water system.

Bernalillo County commissioners unanimously committed general fund dollars for the Carnuel Water and Wastewater Project during their regular commission meeting Tuesday.

For more than a decade, the county has been working with the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority on expanding municipal water and wastewater service into Carnuel. Some families in Carnuel rely on well water or hauled water, according to JJ Herrera, president of the Cañón de Carnué Land Grant.

“We have a lot of families that are leaving their family homes that have been there for generations,” Herrera said.

The Cañón de Carnué Land Grant was established in 1763, but Carnuel residents are also part of the city, with Albuquerque addresses. Some wells are drying up as the aquifer lowers, said Moises Gonzales, vice president of the Cañón de Carnué Land Grant.

“Really, it’s about our survival as a community,” Gonzales said. “If we don’t have sewer and water, then we’re not going to survive as a community.”

The money will be used to try to secure grant funding from the State Water Trust Board. The grant that the project is competing for could bring in $10 million to $15 million, said County Commissioner Eric Olivas, who sponsored the resolution.

“This is one of our original seven land grants. There’s only two of them that are truly still active and in operation today,” Olivas said.

Carnuel is “geologically challenged” with granite beneath many of the roads and homes, Olivas said. The granite makes it harder and more expensive to install water systems.

“Unlike in the South Valley, where you’re going through clay, or in Albuquerque on the West Mesa, where you’re going through sand, they’re having to cut through granite, and so it does raise the cost dramatically,” Gonzales said.

Local, federal and state legislators, along with the Water Authority and Carnuel’s Mutual Domestic Water and Wastewater Association, have already obtained $12 million from the state Water Trust Board, the New Mexico Drinking Water Revolving Fund, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for Carnuel’s water system, according to David Morris, spokesman for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority.

Since 2008, the Water Authority has completed six miles of pipeline and a 380,000-gallon reservoir. The community still needs another 17½ miles of pipeline, according to Morris. The next phase in water infrastructure construction has already been funded for $350,000 and should be complete in the fall. That phase will build another 640 feet of pipe.

Bernalillo County also committed $3.8 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars to the Water Authority for a Carnuel sewer system. The first phase of the sewer system project is out for bids and slated to start in the fall. That project will include the installation of about 13,000 linear feet of low pressure sewer line, which could serve 142 households.

The Carnuel population is approximately 2,000 people with 800 households, according to Morris.