The Sandoval County Commission on May 8 approved an emergency/disaster declaration to address a water supply crisis in the Village of Cuba.
The emergency item was added to the agenda due to an ongoing situation in Cuba where residents were without water and had been facing low water pressure for three weeks.
“By doing this declaration, we can forward it up to the state, we can forward it up to the Governor’s Office and the governor can do an executive order, basically a state declaration for this,” said emergency manager Dan Heerding while presenting to the commission.
According to Cuba Mayor Denny Herrera, a village infrastructure problem persisted for nearly three weeks before the commission meeting. The affected area includes homes around Highway 126, Nacimiento Road and Southern All Around Road.
Herrera said the problem water lines are around 40 years old and there have been water pressure issues in the area for about 10 years. The water comes from a tank near the high school, a booster pump is needed halfway up the water line to ensure residents at higher elevations receive water, with gravity assisting the flow back down to lower areas like County Road 11 and the park.
“This time of the year, people start using water for different uses and it just kills the pressure everywhere,” Herrera said. “People expect to have water and have water pressure at all times, you can’t plan to take a bath around somebody else’s watering schedule.”
Herrera said village officials went house to house in the affected area, distributing water from the 2022 water emergency and arranging hotel accommodations for residents if needed.
At the commission meeting, Heerding noted the village had been working with contractors attempting to resolve the issue before the emergency declaration without success.
Herrera said a crew found an obstruction in the line on May 9 and they were going to drain the line to do a pressure test to help with the pressure.
“Hopefully that will be like a band-aid, like the rest of our water system in Cuba, Herrera said.
The Fix
According to Herrera, Cuba will receive capital outlay money to work on the problem, although it won’t entirely resolve the problem. He said the village runs a deficit in the water department each year, necessitating an increase in water rates which have remained unchanged for about 15 years.
Once the village has a positive cash flow in the water department, they can pursue United States Department of Agriculture funding. Most major grants required for large projects have matching grant conditions, making it necessary to stabilize the water department financially before undertaking significant debt service.
The village will have to replace the two-inch water line with either four or six-inch lines. Hererra said the village received initial estimates from an engineering firm and is waiting on others. The estimated cost for a two-inch line replacement is $2.6 million.
He said if the line does not get replaced, the village will be in the same boat this summer when it gets hot.