OPINION: One year after the big storm, can Downtown trust the pump stations?

The arrival of monsoon season traditionally brings a dose of sweet relief to Albuquerque, cutting through the usual summer blast furnace and opening up more afternoon and evening hours to pleasant outdoor pursuits. But for residents and business owners in the city center area, 2025’s monsoon brings with it something else entirely: nervous hope.

The nervousness comes from the hard reality of being at the bottom of a river valley. Rain that falls here doesn’t really go away. What the ground can’t absorb and the air can’t evaporate just piles up in the lower lying areas, particularly the neighborhoods of Martineztown, South Broadway, Barelas and the Downtown core.

If a rainstorm involves a few drops and a little thrashing wind, that’s no problem at all, but when 1.5 inches fell in 90 minutes June 29, 2024, things got very real very fast. Water funneled toward the Downtown area, quickly rose to shin or knee level in the streets, cascaded over the sidewalks and in at least a couple of cases, entered homes. Wakes from passing cars became a particular hazard as they propelled waves toward buildings.

Needless to say, it should never come to that. If all goes to plan, a network of gigantic pump stations owned by the city and operated by the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority kicks in and propels all that water to a safe place. One of those stations — at Marble and Arno in Martineztown — is new as of 2022 and can pump nearly 50,000 gallons per minute, which is only slightly below the average flow of the Rio Grande in recent weeks.

Last June, however, the network suffered a compound failure. For a diverse list of reasons, four of the city center’s six stations — including that new one — didn’t kick on. Meanwhile, a short power outage at a Water Authority operations center scrambled the alarm system that is supposed to bring news of such problems. Downtown and surrounding neighborhoods were soon at the brink of a major flooding disaster, but for hours, the people in charge of keeping an eye on things believed everything was fine.

The Water Authority gradually disabused itself of that idea through decidedly low-tech means. Two stations were brought back online by staffers who happened to be visiting them for reasons not connected with the torrential rain. In South Broadway, a neighborhood resident called in a tip. Martineztown residents tried to do the same but couldn’t figure out the right number (it’s 505-842-9287). Help only came after Mayor Tim Keller arrived at around 11:30 p.m. as part of a broader inspection tour and started making phone calls.

Thankfully, the damage was minimal, but a lot of that came down to luck. If another half-inch of rain had fallen, we might still be working to repair dozens or maybe hundreds of residential and commercial buildings.

The city and Water Authority say that things are different now. Jennifer Turner, the director of the Department of Municipal Development, reported recently that the city has done “an audit of every station and made sure every pump, every control, and every person is ready for this year’s monsoon season.” The Water Authority, meanwhile, has placed one of its alarm systems on a backup power supply. During monsoon rains, spokesman David Morris said, a dedicated staffer will now physically visit pump stations to make sure things are working.

And yet, there is still reason to be nervous. It may be many more years before we see another rain like the one that fell last June 29, so there is plenty of time for those best-laid plans to atrophy and for the people who made them to move on. Should another compound failure occur, the backup plan will again involve everyday people knowing the right number to call, but if last year is any indication, they are in short supply. The city and Water Authority do much to enlist residents in campaigns to track down criminal suspects, report water waste and (very recently) keep an eye out for suspicious activity in the bosque, but there is no equivalent see-something-say-something effort centered around pump stations.

For the city center, 2024 was a sobering reminder that what stands between us and a disastrous flood is a pack of fallible humans and fickle machines. In 2025, those monsoon rain clouds are still delightful, but they bring with them fresh concerns. The odds may be good that everything will turn out fine, but in the end, we can only hope.