Water donations go quickly as Mora County residents learn of contaminated wells

MORA — A stack of empty wooden pallets sat on a trailer outside the Mora County Courthouse on Wednesday afternoon when Orlando Martinez came looking for water. Only a half package of water remained from bottles donated at the start of the week.

A few minutes later, a truck with nine more pallets of bottled water arrived. Quickly, a line of vehicles formed, all people concerned that their private well water could be contaminated with metals.

Martinez and most of his neighbors living in the mountains rely on private wells for water.

“You can’t relax, because you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Martinez said.

Martinez was living in Mora County when the 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire disrupted life for many. The windows of his home were ruptured by the fire and he wasn’t able to return for a month.

The New Mexico Department of Health advised Mora County residents on Friday that they should get their private wells tested after high levels of metals were found in the groundwater, including three metals — antimony, arsenic and uranium — that exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking water limits. Seven other metals were found at elevated levels, but within EPA standards. The agency advised limiting exposure by drinking bottled water.

NMDOH also recommended installing reverse osmosis systems out of an abundance of caution.

Some of the metals detected are similar to those used in firefighting materials, but there’s not a definite answer on the source of the metals, according to New Mexico Environment Department spokesman Drew Goretzka.

Mora County does not run any of the more than 20 public water systems in the county and does not have authority over private wells. But county commissioners held an emergency meeting Wednesday morning to help residents get their questions answered by state and local officials.

Commission Chairman George Trujillo has been asking businesses for water donations.

Trujillo estimates a quarter of county residents rely on private wells, while the majority use public water systems. So far, nothing unusual has been reported from the community wells.

Carlos and Ruby Martinez got some of their questions answered at the public meeting. Ruby Martinez has been feeling ill recently and the couple is worried their private well water could be the cause. On Thursday, they plan to get her a blood test to find out.

At high concentrations or with long-term exposure, heavy metals like those found in the county’s groundwater can damage the kidneys, skin, cardiovascular system, and nervous system, according to an NMDOH news release.

The metals weren’t found by the state of New Mexico, but by Zeigler Geologic Consulting, which was initially hired by the county government in 2023 then supported by an anonymous private donor to test water quality after the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire.

The abrupt increase in antimony and manganese was unexpected for the area’s geology, according to an October memo from the geologic company.

Private wells are outside of NMED’s authority, Goretzka said, although agency staff have collaborated with the state’s Health Department and Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management in private well testing after fires. NMED is doing additional sampling in Mora County since the metals were detected.

Kate Zeigler, the geologist who led the independent geologic study, estimates there are 400 to 500 private wells in the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak burn scar.

When they began testing in 2023, Zeigler’s company tested 18 wells. Each year they sample again, tracking changes in water quality. As of August, they had tested 55 wells this year, primarily in Mora County as well as some in northern San Miguel County. Of those, 51 tested positive for metals associated with firefighting materials.

The increase in those metals is something her team didn’t expect.

“We were honestly kind of starting to think, … maybe the aquifers are going to make it through. Then the 2025 data came in, and there were these metals freaking everywhere,” Zeigler said.

Those metals can come from other sources. For example, some of them could come from a house burning down or a barn with equipment in it catching fire, she said, so there are a lot of unknowns.

“These are big, complex watersheds. It is complex geology. We lost a lot of structures, and we don’t necessarily know what all burned in those structures. We have depressant drops all over the mountains that weren’t always tracked,” she said.

“It’s going to take a lot more work to understand where these metals are going, where they’re accumulating, where they’re dispersing, and how long they live in these systems.”

Mora resident Paula Garcia does not have a private well, but the news of contaminants in county groundwater has her worried about the quality of surface water running from the Mora River into her acequia to water crops like blue corn and chokecherry trees.

On top of everything else, it felt like a gut punch.

“Seeing the mountains burn, going through the trauma of the fire and evacuation and that feeling of uncertainty is really, really horrible,” Garcia said.

“Then seeing the acequias destroyed and working on that disaster recovery has been really hard. But I don’t think anything hit me as hard as learning that metals are in our water, because that just seems so chronic.”