He Fell Waist-Deep Into a Hole. That's How Pineywoods Estates Residents in High Rolls Found Their Water Leak.
The Sacramento Mountains community faced a water crisis during heavy snowfall. Some residents have had service restored, with a boil advisory in effect until further testing is complete.
“There was grass covering up where the vault had blown out,” Bud Williams said. “I fell up to my waist in a hole. That’s exactly how we found the leak.”
Some Pineywoods Estates properties have been without running water for 19 days after Winter Storm Fern battered the Sacramento Mountains.
And naturally, hardships follow. A family teaching their toddler to unlearn flushing. An elderly couple recovering from hip surgery, bathing with Dude Wipes.
A “perfect storm” of frozen pipes, downed trees, and communication failures has exposed the fragility of rural water systems.
The community of about 35 full-time residents, just west of Cloudcroft, still has 9 to 10 homes without water, out of roughly 100.
Sources indicate that the outages primarily affect a section with full-time homes, meaning nearly a third of full-time residents are entering their third week without water.
The Break
According to operations manager and Pineywoods Estates Water Association (PEWA) board member Bud Williams, the water pipe break occurred just before the storm hit the area the weekend of January 23. Over 13 inches of snow complicated the search for the leak.
New PEWA water operator David Hunter said it happened on “the side of a hill where nobody lives, nobody goes over there, so nobody noticed it.”
Williams said he searched for hours in the rain on Friday before the storm. “I looked in the rain on Friday for 10 or 12 hours trying to find the leak. Couldn’t find it,” he said.
He finally discovered it by accident after the snow.
Williams estimates the system lost about 37,000 gallons in roughly half a day.
Once located, the Pineywoods Estates Water Association (PEWA) contracted General Hydronics — the company that originally installed the system — to make repairs.
“They couldn’t get equipment up because of the mud, the snow, and the ice,” Hunter said.
The Perfect Storm
PEWA board member and Pineywoods full-timer Don Glowe described the conditions: “We had about 13 inches of snow here with ice underneath, and it was heavy snow, so we had a lot of trees come down, telephone poles coming down.”
”It took me 6 hours to get from where the leak was all the way up to the top tank during 8-degree weather, cutting trees,” Williams said. “I couldn’t get to the tank, so two days later, I found that it was empty.”
Nancy Apprill, a 50-year Pineywoods resident and former board member, said, “It wasn’t like one person was responsible for this. It was the conditions of what was happening at the same time.”
Glowe said he was without a telephone or internet for a week and a half: “I had to run down the mountain to either talk on the telephone or get on the internet.”
The System
The Pineywoods water system presents unique challenges. Williams says there is a 185-foot elevation difference from the top of the tank to the bottom of the system. “So you have a lot of water pressure,” he said.
The system has 15 pressure-regulating valves (PRVs) — ”which is kind of unusual for a system that size, but it’s because of the elevation changes,” Williams said. The system operates as a loop, “to where everything has to be working properly or somebody’s gonna be cut off of water.”
Hunter explained another challenge: “The blueprints that we have are incomplete.”
“It’s a poorly maintained system. So we’re starting kind of from ground zero,” Williams said.
“Everything was just patched together, held together,” he said.
Williams said he didn’t receive the system’s blueprints until two days before the previous operator quit.
“The system was installed in 2009 and it wasn’t really maintained all that well. They didn’t go over everything every year or any particular schedule,” said Glowe.
Williams says the road maintenance contributes to the issue, with washed-out zones.
“Our water system needs work without a doubt,” Williams said. “In a way, this is a good thing that it happened because now we’re going to be able to see all the problems, identify them, and try to start filing for grants.”
Lauren Groesbeck, the Village of Cloudcroft’s grants writer and a Pineywoods resident, noted that domestic water associations can file for capital outlay funds through the state’s ICIP process—the same mechanism municipalities use. “I think there’s a larger opportunity for other communities to not have this experience,” she said.
The Response
Hunter, who took over the water operator role on January 1, handles samples, testing, and regulatory notices. Williams manages operations and repairs.
According to Williams, he has been working seven days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day, since the break occurred. He says he took an entire week off from his regular job at a paint and body shop to search for the leak and make repairs.
The team has received support from the New Mexico Rural Water Association’s circuit rider program, funded by the USDA. The group delivered a water tanker with potable water to the entrance of Pineywoods.
Hunter said he monitors chlorine residuals in the tanker “at least every other day to make sure that it’s still good, clean water.”
The Village of Cloudcroft offered to help dig up the leak site, but was told it wasn’t possible.
“Whoever the contractor is that calls in the 811 dig is the only one that’s authorized to work on that dig,” Williams explained. He said that because General Hydronics had already called in the 811 locating service, only they could legally perform the excavation work.
Additional help is coming from the state. Williams said specialists in high-altitude water systems were expected to arrive Monday afternoon or Tuesday to diagnose the issue with the pressure-regulating valves and determine whether the lines are frozen.
Williams says they are working on temporary solutions, such as using new firehoses and “poly” connecting hydrants, to provide water to the remaining homes while they repair or unfreeze pipes. “We won’t have a whole lot of pressure going to it. We can use poly to connect hydrants to get it going.”
“It is still a work in progress. We’re doing everything we can.”
Robert Denner, who moved to Pineywoods from Ohio with his wife in June, saw the work firsthand. “There are three or four guys I saw yesterday, Super Bowl Sunday, 12 o’clock, they’re ankle deep in mud and water, working in the lockers trying to figure out what’s going on here.”
Communication Breakdown
“The bone of contention really hasn’t been the lack of water," Denner said.
For many residents, the frustration isn't the outage itself—it's the silence.
“We live on a mountain, we're used to preparing. It's the complete lack of communication from the board,” Denner added. He asked repeatedly for board contact information and got no response. Other residents reported emails to the PEWA website going unanswered.
Glowe said, ”Most of the people who are really upset got poor information, and they got secondhand, thirdhand information. They never came to the board. I will take a call any time, and I’ll explain what I know. I didn’t have anybody call me.”
The NM Secretary of State and the state’s Drinking Water Watch website both had outdated board information. Board member Charles Stigall confirmed the current members of the PEWA board: Bill Depauw, acting President; David Head, Secretary; Don Glowe, Treasurer; Rhonda Stewart; Joe Barcevac; Charles Stigall; and Bud Williams.
Late Tuesday, PEWA sent an email to members, outlining contractor work and assistance from the New Mexico Water Authority. A Wednesday follow-up reported the Henry Summit tank had dropped 13,000 gallons overnight—either a new leak or lines finally filling. Neither email was signed.
The phone number on the PEWA website connects to the Granite Mountain Accounting firm in Las Cruces.
“That’s going to be corrected. That’s an error. Yeah, the accounting firm is only there to answer billing questions,” Glowe said.
Denner, an IT Network Engineer at Marathon Petroleum Corporation, offered to assist with PEWA website management on Tuesday, February 10.
Boil Water Notice
Hunter issued a boil-water advisory as a precaution when system pressure dropped. “Anytime that happens, that’s when contamination can happen,” he explained.
The advisory will remain in effect even after water is restored. “The boil notice will stay in effect until I pull Bac-T samples and get good results on several different testing locations,” Hunter said.
Living Without Water
Residents have adapted in various ways to the prolonged outage.
During the storm, a couple in their 80s—one of whom had hip surgery just two days before—reported they were doing okay, and “bathing with Dude Wipes.”
One family with a young child who is potty training has faced particular challenges.
“Having to load up your whole family to go take a shower, when it’s hard enough to get a toddler into the bath, is challenging,” the parent said. “Having them unlearn how to flush a toilet is challenging. Not being able to wash pottied clothes is challenging.”
The parent added: “We’re trying to really maintain positivity about it, and I can’t overstate, like, I do feel like there are people who are committed to the solution, but it just doesn’t seem like there was a plan in place for when this happened.”
Apprill has relied on a friend’s home for showers and uses a black storage tank to flush toilets with non-potable water. She’s switched to paper plates to avoid dishes.
“I am by myself. So one person isn’t so bad, but you add two or three people, then it gets a little bit worse,” she said.
The association’s potable water tanker is available for residents to use at the community entrance off Highway 82.
According to Glowe, the PEWA board holds regular meetings, open to the public. “We get almost no one other than board members,” he said.
Glowe said. “The board of directors is all voluntary.”
Another resident described the experience: “I think that everyone in our community was fully equipped for living in rural mountainous New Mexico. But when you’re on day 18 of not having water, when it’s a service that you pay for, I think it’s just enlightening as to how fortunate we are to typically have running water.”
The resident added, “If the utility you are providing is unavailable, there is a responsibility to communicate about that to the people that are dependent on what you are providing.”
Apprill said she’s received emails from the association, but they’ve been “slow in coming.”
“I don’t understand why they didn’t communicate more with the people,” Apprill said. “I just wish they had communicated a little bit more.”
Residents say the outage highlights the need for better emergency planning across small domestic water associations.
“It really highlights that we are consistently at the mercy of our water situation,” one resident said. “It underscores the need for our community and all the communities throughout the Sacramento Mountains to really fortify their water solutions. Like, OK, here’s Plan A. If this doesn’t work, what’s Plan B? What’s Plan C?”
Getting Information
Folks seeking updates can contact PEWA at pewa@tularosa.net or call board treasurer Don Glowe at 575-682-6542. All owners and members of PEWA are on the email list, according to board members.
Contact information is also available through the state’s Drinking Water Watch website at https://dww.water.env.nm.gov. The Pineywoods system number is NM3546019.
“I’m here to serve them,” Hunter said. “If that’s answering questions, then that’s my job.”
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This is high quality reporting. Hope the folks in Pineywoods get their water situation resolved soon.