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Fire chief outlines hydrant expansion, ties system to boost Bosque protection
Summary
Fire Chief Anthony Martinez told the Corrales council that recent line tie-ins and new hydrants increase capacity and redundancy, and he urged grant funding to reach a long-term goal of broader hydrant coverage near the Bosque.
Fire Chief Anthony Martinez briefed the Village of Corrales governing body on efforts to expand fire-suppression capacity and add hydrants near the Bosque preserve.
Martinez said the department has added pipe and hydrants on recent projects and linked pump stations to improve capacity and redundancy. “We met in the middle. It’s an 8‑inch line. We take both systems and we increase the capacity,” he said, describing a connection between the Loma Largo pumping station and the main station that adds the two stations’ storage and backup power.
The chief listed tank sizes and pump capabilities: the main station tank at roughly 120,000 gallons with a 1,000‑gallon‑per‑minute pump, Loma Largo at about 82,000–84,000 gallons with 250‑gpm pumps, and a rec‑center tank with a 1,000‑gpm pump where three‑phase power is available. He said the department designs pump operation by demand so pumps stage on flow need.
On hydrant siting, Martinez said the village’s long‑term aim is to place hydrants about every 500 to 1,000 feet where feasible, but that plan is constrained by budget and by a patchwork of private roads and easements: “The limitation is budget, but the imagination and the planning is not limited,” he said. He reported six hydrants installed on the Andrews Lane project and said the final hydrant for that phase is expected to be installed on Thursday, at a location chosen to serve the Bosque as closely as permitted within the MRGCD right‑of‑way.
Councilors pressed the chief on realistic timelines and counts. Martinez estimated the village currently has about 60 hydrants and said the 500‑foot spacing would require on the order of thousands of hydrants to fully achieve; he called a target of roughly 2,500 a rough planning figure and stressed the need for federal or grant funding for village‑wide engineering and build‑out.
Martinez also described interim and complementary tactics for areas without hydrants: tanker‑shuttling operations, portable ponds (about 2,100 gallons) and the ability to pump from tanks to supply lines. He noted that some wells and pump houses produce limited recovery rates (for example, some wells yield about 50 gallons per minute, while the rec center well was selected for higher recovery at roughly 400 gpm).
The presentation concluded with council questions about extending Loma Largo lines, tying a Far Northwest tank into the system, and the engineering tradeoffs of single‑phase versus three‑phase power at remote wells. Martinez said many projects are shovel‑ready and can move faster with additional funding.
