Failing Wastewater Treatment Plant, New Dark Skies Committee Forms: Village Updates
Expert calls WWTP failure a true ‘emergency.’ Plus, key takeaways from the Tuesday, April 21, Village of Cloudcroft meeting
The clarigestor at Cloudcroft’s wastewater treatment plant is failing, and an independent expert contracted by the state, Robert George, said so in writing.
In a letter dated April 14, addressed to Steven Deal, PE, of NMED’s Construction Programs Bureau, George wrote that the clarigestor treatment unit's failing condition “has reached the point that swift actions are needed to avoid major impacts to the treatment process and environment.”
He added: “Unlike many situations that are characterized as ‘emergencies’ in the realm of wastewater treatment, this actually is one.”
Public Works Supervisor J.J. Carrizal shared the letter to the village council at last night’s Tuesday, April 21 meeting.
The letter has not been sent yet. Carrizal says it was originally drafted to create awareness of the plant’s failure and support future grants to help with sampling schedules.
“With these samples, it will tell us what kind of plant we need,” Carrizal told the Reader. He plans to ask for a grant to help cover sampling costs in an already tight budget.
George has worked with village Wastewater Operator Scott Powell for over three decades and visited the facility on December 3, 2025, under his current contract with NMED.
What’s a Clarigestor?
The clarigestor — a steel vessel that has been in service for more than 40 years — handles solids settling and sludge storage for both the older trickling filter (TF) process train and the newer membrane bioreactor (MBR) system.
According to George’s letter, corrosion has compromised the inlet box, inner baffle, effluent launder, weir, piping, and the vessel itself. Uncontrollable leakage from the launder is causing the water level inside the unit to drop during lower-flow periods, allowing chunks of sludge to exit in the effluent.
“You just touch (the clarigestor) with a finger and chunks just crumble off,” Powell told the council Tuesday. “It’s literally falling apart in front of our eyes.”
George’s letter warns that if components dislodge and fall into the primary clarifier section, flow through the unit could stop entirely. The resulting sewage overflows and treatment failures could produce “prolonged discharge of poorly treated and disinfected wastewater into the Mexican Canyon outfall, resulting in significant threats to public health and impacts to the downstream environment and water resources.”
The MBR system, installed in 2017 and brought online in 2018, currently cannot handle the full volume of wastewater the facility receives, which is why the trickling filter remains in service.
The plant processes between 40,000 and nearly 230,000 gallons per day, depending on tourist season.
Short-Term Plan(t)
CDM Smith Engineering and the village, with George’s input, are developing a bypass plan: wastewater will be rerouted around the clarigestor and sent directly to the trickling filter (TF), skipping primary clarification. The clarigestor vessel will be preserved and repurposed as a sludge storage tank for both the MBR and TF systems until a new sludge storage facility is built.
George called for this work to be treated as an “emergency procurement” situation under NMSA 1978, § 13-1-127, allowing the village to expedite the project without normal bidding timelines. He wrote to NMED asking for “rapid reviews and approvals of proposals and requests.”
Carrizal said the village had already begun in-house work on the bypass on Tuesday and was meeting with George and CDM/Smith on Wednesday for engineering sign-off. He said he would bring cost figures to the council — crane removal of internal parts, a new compressor, an aeration blower, and increased sludge hauling — at the next meeting.
George’s letter projects that the bypass plan should allow the village to manage a reasonable level of treatment “for the foreseeable future (next 1–2 years).”
Longer-Term Replacement
According to Carrizal, CDM Smith is also developing a full preliminary engineering report, expected in approximately six months, recommending a full replacement plant configuration. Construction would be a multi-year project after that.
Carrizal told the council, “Then that’s where lobbying comes in and starts asking money from the state.”
Powell, who has run the plant for more than 30 years, retires in December. His successor, Sean O’Connor, is working toward upper-level certifications and will take his Level 1 operator test this month. Carrizal holds the license required to keep things running in the interim.
Village Makes Big Move on Property Acquisition
The council unanimously approved Resolution 2026-14, beginning the formal process of purchasing the U.S. Forest Service land the treatment plant sits on.
Village Clerk Jini Turri explained the resolution’s immediate purpose: “This is just to obligate the money that the state has granted us and to start the process with the Forest Service.”
Steps ahead include easements, an appraisal, and a final survey. Land ownership has been a long-standing barrier to financing plant upgrades. As Powell told the Reader this week: “That’s part of the reason why we weren’t getting grants — because we didn’t own the land.”
In the Dark (and Liking it)
The council unanimously activated the Outdoor Lighting Advisory Committee under Section 8-3-10 of the village code — for the first time since the dark sky ordinance was adopted decades ago.
The three-member committee will advise Planning and Zoning on lighting compliance and help interpret the ordinance for residents and businesses.
Greg Crinklaw, one of the original ordinance drafters, spoke at the meeting and volunteered to serve. Steph Snedden, fellow original drafter, was also appointed. A third seat remains open; the mayor will accept letters of interest.
The ordinance does not require committee members to live within village limits.
During public comment, a “semi-retired” University of Texas professor, James Lechleiter, said he and his wife moved to Cloudcroft within the past year specifically for its dark skies, and spoke in support of the ordinance. He pointed to the concentration of professional astronomy in the immediate area as evidence of what’s at stake.
The Dragonfly Telephoto Array — a collaboration between Yale University and the University of Toronto, commissioned in 2013 — is built from clusters of commercially available Canon telephoto lenses with specially coated optical glass that dramatically reduces scattered light.
That design makes it uniquely capable of detecting extremely faint, diffuse galaxies that larger conventional telescopes miss. It has been used to discover previously unknown galaxies and to study galaxies composed almost entirely of dark matter. The array has grown from its original eight lenses to an over one-hundred-lens Spectral Line Mapper now mapping faint gas clouds across wide fields of sky — work that simply cannot be done from a brightly lit location.
Crinklaw said the ordinance is largely sound but needs two updates: language permitting LED street lighting, since the lamp types originally specified are no longer manufactured, and a shift from wattage to lumen limits.
He said most current violations have simple fixes. “Turn it off at night. That solves the problem.”
Library Updates: Three Open Board Seats
Library Director Sandra Barr reported that the library is averaging 31 patrons per day. The $11,000 in GO bond funds has been fully spent on permanent fixtures — couches, chairs, computers, two printers, bookcases, and outdoor umbrellas.
A book sale is ongoing now through this Saturday, April 25, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Bags of books are $5; rare titles will be individually priced. Funds raised go to the Friends of the Library, who fund library events.
Three library board seats are currently vacant.
One seat also remains open on the newly activated Outdoor Lighting Advisory Committee. Letters of interest for both should be submitted to Mayor Dusty Wiley at ccvillagemayor@cloudcroftvillage.com.
Leftover Lodger’s Tax Approvals
The council unanimously approved two lodgers tax awards from remaining funds in the current fiscal year, on recommendation of the Lodgers Tax Advisory Board.
The second annual Pickleball in the Clouds tournament, organized by Samantha Odom, takes place June 6-7 and will receive $4,579 for promotional materials.
Shane Asbury’s Wanderlust Running Trails and Rails Run is on June 13, and he was awarded $2,500. Asbury has taken over the three-race summer series from the previous organizer, Cloudcroft Runners.
Public Servant Future Finance
Trustee Gail McCoy raised the question of compensating governing body members.
McCoy said she learned at a recent New Mexico Municipal League meeting that Cloudcroft is one of only two villages in the state that do not compensate their governing bodies.
“I think we need more people stepping up,” McCoy said. “Maybe we can get some young blood in here too — that could utilize it, maybe has a good job, but they need to make that extra $250 (per meeting).”
Village counsel Attorney Zach Cook clarified that any ordinance establishing compensation could only apply to members after they next stand for election — no sitting trustee could collect under a new ordinance until re-elected. Adoption would require a draft ordinance and a public hearing.
No action was taken. The council indicated it would return with draft language and figures.
Records Control
The council adopted a records retention policy (Resolution 2026-13) aligned with the New Mexico Municipal Records Retention Schedule. The policy allows the destruction of records once they have met their required retention period.
The council unanimously approved destroying financial records stored by the maintenance shop in a Conex storage container, including payroll files, time sheets, accounts payable and receivable, and general finance records from fiscal years 2016 through 2020.
All carried a retention period of three years after the audit report. Destruction will be handled by Vital Records Control, a certified destruction company.
The upcoming fiscal year’s budget workshop is on Tuesday, April 28, at 3 p.m. at the Village Chambers, where department heads will present operational budgets.
It’s open to the public. See you there.
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