In Mora County, hunt for water contaminants ongoing

MORA COUNTY — Outside a home tucked down a dirt road in Mora County, environmental engineer Tom Brown dumped out a 5-gallon bucket of well water, then another, tracing a path from a well-cared-for wooden wellhouse to the nearby pines.

Brown was flushing the well so he could get a clean sample that wouldn’t be contaminated by anything between the well and the pump.

After five to 10 minutes, the well had been adequately flushed. With blue gloves on, he filled a 250-milliliter water sample container, then another. His colleague, senior environmental scientist Holly Cannon, filled out a form documenting what the different water samples would be tested for as Brown labeled each bottle.

One bottle he flipped around and around. That water will be tested for PFAS, so the bottle had a pH buffer to ensure the sample doesn’t degrade. Flipping the bottle activated the preservative.

Before testing the water, Brown and Cannon asked the homeowner about fire damage on the property and any post-fire flooding. If the wellhead had been submerged during flooding and there isn’t a sanitary seal, it can raise the risk of contamination.

The pair test anywhere from 10 to 17 wells a day, and those days can stretch out to long hours, depending on how far apart the wells are from one another.

People are grateful to see them coming, Cannon said.

An independent geologic study turned up troubling levels of heavy metal contamination in Mora County last year, and the New Mexico Environment Department is still testing private wells in Mora, San Miguel and Taos counties to find out how widespread that contamination is. The money to do so will soon run out.

The agency’s first round of sampling in December turned up no contaminants, but the second round found some concerning levels of arsenic, barium, uranium and PFAS.

The 2025 independent study found levels of antimony, uranium and arsenic that exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water standards and manganese levels that were also above EPA guidelines. The company that conducted the study had been monitoring well water in the area in the years following the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, on the lookout for groundwater contamination.

“Fires, in my mind, could unleash a Pandora's box of vulnerabilities after the fact and it can last for years after, as we've seen up here,” said Andy Jochems, with the New Mexico Drinking Water Bureau’s Source Water Protection Team.

Fires burn plants that would normally hold soil in place and protect mountains from erosion. They can also leave behind waxy, water-repellant soils that also increase runoff and tend to contribute a lot of ash and charcoal. Plants can also get burned off natural rock formations that have naturally occurring contaminants, which can end up downslope.

“A lot of times you have folks that report really dark or even almost black colored water right after a fire,” Jochems said.

They also burn human infrastructure like buildings and cars that can be the source of contaminants.

Baseline water testing before an emergency can make it clearer after a fire if water contaminants are normal or abnormal for the area. That before-data is limited in Mora County. There is some data from public water systems, which are required to do compliance sampling.

“It seems to happen a lot more often than not that something happens like a fire and then it turns out there's not a lot of baseline data to go by,” Jochems said.

NMED is using the well water sampling as an opportunity to get baseline data on an emerging contaminant: PFAS, also called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a group of manmade chemicals widely used in products from lotions to firefighting foam.

“This is going to be the largest sampling of PFAS in the history of New Mexico,” said Andrew Hautzinger with NMED’s Water Protection Division.

The agency is testing private wells for PFAS in other pockets of the state, like the communities of La Cienega and La Cieneguilla, and near Cannon Air Force Base, where there are known groundwater plumes contaminated with PFAS. But the burn scar area will be the largest sampling in terms of the number of samples in an area of land.

“This is a big help here in a part of the state where we hadn't done much testing for PFAS previously. So, not that we want to find it, but if we do, it leads our investigation in places that it needs to go,” Jochems said.

Early results

During a state Senate committee hearing last week, Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas, expressed concern over the impact of water contamination on local residents and animals alike.

"It definitely is a serious issue we're dealing with at home," said Campos, who added that contamination could spread in underground aquifers to other parts of New Mexico.

In response, Ali Rye, the state director for the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said a task force involving three different state agencies has been created to take action on the issue.

But she also said initial results from well testing conducted by the state have shown the presence of fewer heavy metals than initial private testing.

"Some things are really just not adding up," said Rye, who added that some local wells are now being retested.

NMED has gotten more than 500 applications for well tests in the burn scar area, and has tested 239 wells. It will likely run out of money for testing more private wells after the next 100, said Hautzinger.

The agency has had two rounds of samples come back from testing. The first round of 33 wells turned up no heavy metal or PFAS contaminants, according to Hautzinger.

The second round of 79 samples turned up nine primary exceedances, including for arsenic, barium, uranium and PFAS, 41 secondary exceedances and four lifetime exceedances. A primary exceedance can cause acute health effects, while secondary exceedances can affect the body but don’t cause an immediate health concern. 

Theoretically, those results could all be connected to different wells, but likely some of the wells with exceedances had multiple contaminants.

NMED is still waiting on the full report before releasing any well locations, to be sensitive to well owners’ privacy, but the people who own those wells are being notified before the final report is released.

“Private wells are the hole in America's drinking water donut,” Hautzinger said. “Nationally, there's just not a system in place to ensure homes that use private well water are safe.”

The public water system is where NMED’s jurisdiction programs have been built, said Hautzinger. Its federal funding is tied to the Safe Drinking Water Act, so testing for private wells relies on specific state funding and often one-time, special appropriations, said Jonas Armstrong, director of the Water Protection Division.

The agency is asking state legislators for $4 million to $5 million to address drinking water issues statewide, as well as testing and treatment for private wells.

“We've seen in the last year or two a lot of desire in New Mexico to respond to issues with private wells and help people be informed about the quality of their drinking water. So we're stepping up and doing as best we can with the resources we have,” Armstrong said.

Journal Capitol Bureau Chief Dan Boyd contributed to this report.

Cathy Cook covers the federal government for the Albuquerque Journal. Reach her via email at ccook@abqjournal.com