By Lynn Janes

On February 27, 2025, the commission had a regular meeting at the city annex building.

The commission voted for Alex Brown, Silver City town manager, to remain as the chair.

New business

Brown had an update on the regional water project. Freeport McMoRan (FMI) has been in the process of transferring ownership of the Santa Clara and Hurley water rights. The application process for the construction of the well and transmission line at Santa Clara and Hurley has been started. They will be using the funds allocated to Bayard and ISC (Interstate Stream Commission) funds to pay for the match. Hurley has applied for $1.5 million to finish and do the design for their well field.

Priscilla Lucero, Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments executive director, said the town of Silver City would be applying for Colonias funding. They will need to do a lease agreement with FMI to move forward and have been in that process. They have to have some proof of ownership until the transfer of the water rights. Ty Bays, FMI, has been working on the documents needed.

Lucero said while they had been at Grant County Days for the legislature in Santa Fe, they had met with the governor to give the progress of the project. While there they had also met with the governor's infrastructure person and the environment department and had some good conversation and have been well informed on the project. It had been clear to Lucero that they would be willing to help the project to fruition. The Rural Infrastructure program would be utilized on a $500,000 a year basis. It will need to be applied for annually. They had also been able to address the capital outlay requests for the project by Santa Clara and Hurley.

Being one of the water ambassadors, Lucero said she knew they had a lot of funding for regionalization and water infrastructure needs. Currently they have an RFP (request for proposal), and it has two components. One will be for planning documents and that will be for proposal requests, technical memorandums and anything like that. New Mexico Finance Authority (NMFA) picks the engineers, and that entity can do a letter of request to do a specific plan. Those engineers have been secured at no cost to the commission. The second part would be called the capacity and will be part of the regionalization and will help in anything that has to do with moving the project forward. That could included legal fees, research, etc.

Lucero said they have many funding sources hitting all at once and have different due dates. They have been trying to balance out the best ones to apply for with the least costs. "We are trying to make sure we are doing what is the right thing for the entity to ensure that we are maximizing the opportunity for you without incurring more debt than you need to have." The New Mexico Unit Fund will be opening for planning and design in June and will be a 100 percent grant.

Raymond De la Vega, Stantec, said they had wrapped up 30 percent of the design. They had sent out a request for comments and have received some back. He hoped to have more comments and organize them and have some feedback. They needed to know what will best work for everyone. He suggested a planning session to go over anything unresolved and talk through those options. Stantec would continue to have meetings with the water operators.

De la Vega said that deciding to run the system with potable water instead of raw water had been significant and alleviated a lot of initial concern. The alignment through Bayard because of how tight it would have been needed to be changed. "We are looking forward to getting everyone's feedback and moving forward."

Kristina Ortiz, Rural Partners Network, had a question about the connection points at Santa Clara and how it would be metered. De la Vega said Santa Clara will be an interesting situation and went over the different ways it could be handled and talked about two meters. They had to get further into the project to know.

Steven Parker, Stantec engineer, said they will actually have three points to meter at Santa Clara and explained those points and reasons.

De la Vega went on to talk about the connection between Santa Clara and Hanover and what that would look like. He also addressed possible locations for the booster tanks and the security requirements.

De la Vega spoke to the importance of having the water operators involved. They will be the ones to help the overall project because of their knowledge of the systems. The operators can see possible issues.

The commission has decided to have a working committee for administrative tasks. Lucero and Ortiz had been discussing the need. The regional water project has come to a point it needs to incur some of the administrative responsibilities. Brown brought up the need to make revisions on the joint powers agreement to facilitate the change. The project has come to a point of needed day-to-day work.

Indira Aguirre, Rural Community Assistance Corporation, has been working with Hanover to help them and to help the regional water project with any needs. A committee will be formed and include the clerks from each municipality, and Lucero, Aguirre and Ortiz. They will also be including the assistant county manager. Brown said they would need to let the customers know how the debt would affect their bill. Write ups for the paper to give a lot of lead time will be done.

Sharon Offutt, Freeport McMoRan, said they had done a Grant County Resilience Plan. Part of the plan had been to do some mapping of the nonprofit organizations and had been assigned to the Gila Community Foundation, and they worked with Western New Mexico University. They had a student that needed a senior project. He did a whole map on the nonprofits but also did the regional water project. He mapped out water areas, colonias areas, wells and substations. He mapped out each area and how many water connections would be there and the populations. It will be easy to pull up and use for funding requests. Lucero said what she liked about it had been all of the incorporated areas were in color and the domestics have been mapped out in the areas they cover. The student had added links that would show how many people had connections in those areas. It will really give a good view of what the impact of the regional water project will be. Ortiz suggested to not post any critical infrastructure. Aguirre said with the GIS (geographic information system) you can publish with layers of restrictions on who can access.

The Water Leaders Workshop will be happening April 14, 2025. Lucero said they would really like as many people to participate as possible. She had gone the last year and had learned a lot during the three days.

Alfredo Correa, Rosedale Water Association, asked about the representation for the associations. Brown said it had been done through each of the communities and since Rosedale received their water from Silver City that would be their representation.

The commission approved resolution 2025-01 for the Open Meetings Act. This must be done each year to let the public know when meetings would be happening and where.

The commission approved the acknowledgement of resolution 2025-08 done by the town of Silver City to apply for Colonias Infrastructure Funding for the regional water project.

Agenda items for next meeting

De la Vega said they could start the discussion of the design.

Aguirre said when they first started working with the Grant County Water Commission, they were supposed to perform technical, managerial and financial assessment. That has not been completed. She would like to talk to each entity and ask the questions needed to finish that task. It would require some back tracking because the project had opened up 12 years ago. They agreed Aguirre will be starting with the working committee to obtain the information.

Public input

Mark Valenzuela of Bosque Advisors, Silver City financial advisor, said he worked with them on their bond program on debt. "This is a lot to take on and you are doing a great job."

Next meeting will be held March 20, 2024. (tentative)

Adjourned