Water We Waiting For: Emergency Council Meeting Turns Town Hall
The council approves trucking in water for today's problems and discusses tomorrow's plans with Public Works and an animated crowd.

Tuesday night’s emergency council meeting turned out a substantial crowd—and a discussion of Cloudcroft’s water problems—for today and tomorrow.
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The issue driving the emergency meeting is the village’s inability to replenish our water stores this month. In a nutshell, water is going out faster than it can come in, and the reserves that we tap to cover the deficit are down to perilously low levels.
Public Works Water Operator Aaron Foster said:
“154.8 gallons per minute - that’s what we can produce. I've seen days where (demand) has been as high as 214 gallons per minute. And that's a full day - that's not just an instantaneous flow — that's a full day's worth at 214 gallons a minute. So the majority of this month has been like that, and that's really why our reserves are gone.”
“We cannot keep up with it; we cannot replace what water is being lost.”
To address the immediate crisis of extremely low water reserves, the village council unanimously approved emergency funding to contract Oasis Enterprises to transport potable water to the village for replenishment—a temporary and costly solution.
Estimates suggest a 12-hour day would include 4 to 5 trips to bring up 20-24,000 gallons, costing $3,000 daily.
Jonathan and Sharon Holmes own Oasis Enterprises. They live in Alamogordo and spent 12 years living in Cloudcroft, where they served in the Volunteer Fire Department.
This isn’t their first time trucking water into the village.



Freezes, Snow, and Flow
Public Works Supervisor Joe John (JJ) Carrizal and Water Operator Aaron Foster identified the following water infrastructure challenges: the following water infrastructure issues:
Our “raw water tank” level dipped to around 2 feet over the weekend.
This winter’s lack of snowfall and low temperatures have made pipes vulnerable to freezing. Public Works described snow as a “blanket” that insulates.
“We’re a fire, or we're one or two major main breaks away from draining our tanks,” says Carrizal.
In the winter, water main breaks don’t always surface in Cloudcroft. Crews search with special audio equipment (the council approved the purchase of the Pix4D Catch for $8,000 at this year’s budget retreat). Public works employees also walk from meter can to meter can and listen for leaks—something the public can help with, too. If you hear a leak, call (575) 682-2411.
Comparing numbers with the wastewater plant, Foster says most water is lost in leaks, not current usage: “It's not going to the wastewater plant because I compared Scott (Powell's) numbers with mine, and his flows have not increased. That's a good number to compare. And most days they coincide, but not the last few weeks,” Foster said.
Month to month, both usage and leaks fluctuate the amount of flow.
Foster said, “Since i've been here starting in June, because we were on water restrictions, we saw them drop. By August we were at 130,000 (gallons of total flow a day,) September 130,000 gallons a day, and it was like that most of the Fall. It was really good until Thanksgiving came around, they picked up, dropped down a little bit, but the holidays have been crazy, and it hasn't really dropped since. But this month, since we've had all these breaks, we've had this cold weather, it's gone up quite a bit.”
More comparisons from Cloudcroft’s “busy season” versus the typically slower winter: “I had to calculate that based on our daily flows. On the 13th of January, we had 309,000 gallons. Our typical daily average in August was 130,000 gallons in a day.”
High Water Mark LLC, a consulting firm recently engaged by the Village to address financial reporting issues, had its water resource specialist, Eric Boyda, and hydrologist, Phoebe Suina, listening in to the flood of village water issues.
Over time, an understatement
Public Works labors round-the-clock, answering calls and following up to stop the bleeding on our overtaxed water system.
Early this morning, the Reader rode along with Public Works Supervisor Carrizal and the maintenance crew to check on, turn off, and repair leaks. Carrizal’s phone went off a dozen times during the first ten minutes. He also followed up with Utilities Clerk Casey Bowman after each call.
In the biting cold air and gentle morning snow, Carrizal bent over an open meter can, enduring the water spray on his bare hands and face to shut off the water and fill one more piece of the water puzzle.
On Maple, Sean O’Connor found a loose gasket after sifting through a leak in a shoulder-deep hole dug through the frozen ground.



Outdated or Inefficient Infrastructure
Before Carrizal’s tenure as Public Works Supervisor, the village purchased plastic meter reads, which tend to burst during winter cold snaps, a major contributor to the current water leak issues.
The village recently purchased iHydrants, which will measure pressure and flow and detect leaks quickly. In addition to the digital-read meters, the plastic meters of the past may also need replacing before next winter.
Engaged Attendants
At Tuesday’s meeting, concerned citizens, including retired engineers and a geophysicist, asked refreshingly specific questions on how our water levels are measured, when and how the tanks are maintained, and more.
One expert even offered to help create “shovel-ready” plans and projected costs for future projects for the council to bring to state legislators.
One Lost Lodge resident asked the council and the crowd about public education campaigns, especially concerning high-efficiency appliances like upgrading toilets, shower heads, and dishwashers—and warned about continual leaks from reverse osmosis filters.
Concerns over tourist impacts on the village’s water levels and the need for broadcasting public awareness of Cloudcroft’s dire water straights were also voiced.
Down the Road
Mayor Tim King says he is willing to ask for state money to remedy our water issues.
“On Sunday, I talked to Senator Jim Townsend, and he said that he'll support us as much as they can and will try to get us emergency funds during this legislative session. So I know a number of us are going up for a municipal day and try to talk with our legislators and see if we can get some funding for this,” King said.
Trustee Jim Maynard brought up emergency funding and temporary permits that could be granted for future water-sourcing projects. He also laid out some of the hurdles in the village’s past, present, and future:
“The short-term fixes are what we're talking about tonight. How do we get past the process? When we look at sourcing other liquid water, we have way more water rights than we have liquid water.”
“I mean, as long as I've been here, 40-some odd years, when we look around, we tried to drill holes, and that's just the same source of water. So it's like one big bowl and you stick more straws in it. When we move either out on 244, like we've talked, that's a different source of burn. Now, everybody says, well, what's it going to cost to do a pipeline? Well, what's it going to cost to haul it? At least a pipeline you can calculate.”
“The legislature likes us to have shovel-ready answers. They will fund answers. They're not going to fund the problem for too long.”
“And so I think that's where we kind of split our thinking into what can we do today, tomorrow, next month. That's great. We should support all of them.”
“But then we've got the PURe Water Project. We've got to reuse our water. That's a way of extending the water we have. When we put it on hold, that's a long-term solution that's been funded for many years. What's the legislature going to say if we say, no, we don't do that anymore? Well, how long are we going to want to do the new answer? We can't be fickle.”
“We've got to have a path and march on it. If it takes us 10 years, that's long-term. But if you end up with a new source of water, it's great.”
Public Works and the village council are hosting a Water Workshop, tentatively scheduled for the late afternoon/evening of Wednesday, February 5th. We’ll keep you posted.
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