Category: Canadian River Basin

Clovis City Water Tests Find Toxic [#PFAS] Linked To Cannon Air Force Base — #NewMexico in Focus

From New Mexico in Focus (Laura Paskus):

New tests by Clovis’ water utility show toxic chemicals associated with groundwater contamination from Cannon Air Force Base have been found in the city’s water supply.

According to a letter sent to customers of the utility EPCOR late this week, trace amounts of PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances were found in about 10 percent of the company’s 82 intake wells. In the letter, Clovis operations supervisor Mark Huerta wrote that EPCOR detected the chemicals at levels between four and seven parts per trillion.

Saturday, EPCOR posted an undated copy of the letter on its website, which continued to feature posts from 2018 with headlines such as “Cannon Air Force Base Plume and Why it Doesn’t Affect your Water.”

[…]

In his letter, EPCOR’s Huerta wrote, “None of the sample results came close to EPA’s health-based recommended advisory level. And none of the water EPCOR supplies to you comes from the area surrounding the Cannon plume…”

[…]

The presence of the toxic chemicals in the municipal water supply for Clovis, however, raises questions about how the plume might be moving underground, or if other above-ground uses could be spreading contaminated water.

In the letter to customers, Huerta wrote that “there is no health concern,” and added that the wells that sampled positive for PFAS have been taken out of service…

The Air Force and the New Mexico Environment Department have filed suits and countersuits over the PFAS contamination and its cleanup.

In early 2019, the Air Force sued the state, challenging New Mexico’s attempt to force the military to address the PFAS contamination under the hazardous waste permit issued by NMED. In March 2019, New Mexico filed its own complaint against the Air Force, asking a federal District Court judge to order the military to act on and fund cleanup at Cannon and Holloman.

On Feb. 14, New Mexico In Focus will feature an interview with New Mexico Environment Department Secretary James Kenney about PFAS contamination, including the latest revelations by EPCOR. In August 2019, environmental correspondent Laura Paskus interviewed Kenney about the state’s battle with the Air Force over PFAS.

If you’ve been affected by PFAS contamination in your community, call our tip line at (505) 433-7242.

Clovis, New Mexico. Photo credit: Clovis and Curry County Chamber of Commerce

#NM: Transmountain diversions from the #RioGrande to the #Canadian

Canadian River Basin. By Shannon1 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79040143
Canadian River Basin. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79040143
Map of the Rio Grande watershed. Graphic credit: WikiMedia
Map of the Rio Grande watershed. Graphic credit: WikiMedia

From& The Albuquerque Journal (T.S. Last):

…the one on Jicarita Peak, where water is being diverted from the Rio Grande over a mountain ridgeline eastward to the Rio Canadian watershed, is quite unique, with undercurrents of Indian lore, Spanish land grants and even ripples of the old Santa Fe Ring.

Robert Templeton is former chair of the Embudo Valley Regional Acequia Association and a parciante, or member, of one of the ditches that flows to his field in Dixon where he grows corn and vegetables. He has been studying the diversions for several years and has shared some of what he’s learned with Picuris Pueblo.

“In the history of the diversions, more than a half million acre-feet of water has gone over the divide,” he said, adding that’s a conservative estimate. “If you take that and divide it by the annual flow at the Picuris gauge, the amount is equal to 22 years of the annual flow.”

Templeton knows much of the history of the diversions, the first of which dates back to somewhere between 1819 and 1835. “That’s the one at Alamitos Creek,” he said. “A half-mile ditch takes all the water from Alamitos Creek and puts it in the ditch, and over the divide and to Cleveland (N.M.).”

The second diversion, the Acequia de la Presa, was built about 1865, he said. It directs water from the Rio de la Presa in La Junta Canyon and sends it to Chacón, also on the east side of the mountains.

The third diversion, located at 10,800 feet, takes water from two creeks and directs it to Angostura Creek where, after about 3.5 miles, it is channeled over the divide in waterfall fashion.

It’s that diversion, the Acequia de la Sierra de Holman, completed about 1882, that led Picuris Pueblo to file a lawsuit that members of the infamous Santa Fe Ring, a group of powerful lawyers and speculators, was able quash during New Mexico’s territorial days.

According to an article by Malcolm Ebright that was published in the New Mexico Historical Review in 2017, Thomas B. Catron and Stephen Elkins were among the people who started buying interest in the Mora Land Grant about 1866, “and, soon, residents of the Mora Grant realized that speculators were buying the grant common lands from under them,” Ebright wrote.

A lawsuit was filed on behalf of Picuris Pueblo in 1882, after the third of the diversions was built, due largely to efforts of Juan Bautisa Guerín, Mora’s parish priest. By then, Catron owned the northern portion of the Mora Grant.

“Picuris Pueblo was up against the Mora parish priest and the most powerful member of the Santa Fe Ring,” Ebright wrote. “This might explain why it was almost impossible to move the lawsuit forward after it was filed.”

Any chance of the matter being resolved early on died when an attorney representing the pueblo failed to show up for a court hearing, despite being given several days to do so. Catron was then successful in having the case dismissed on an oral motion. “Thus, Catron was able to dispose of the case without filing any documents to the benefit of the Mora irrigators, while at the same time attempting to partition and sell the common lands of the Mora Land Grant,” according to Ebright.

By that time, thousands of Spanish and Anglo settlers had moved into the area, increasing the demand for water. The pueblo, which then and now is made up of just a few hundred tribal members, was outnumbered and carried little clout.