Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Water topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Village manager: well on wellness property to be transferred to Angel Fire; conversion to municipal use will require tests, metering
Summary
Village Manager Brett Ware said a memo from the Office of the State Engineer would transfer a well on the wellness property to the Village of Angel Fire; converting it to a municipal well will require casing work, inspections, chlorination, EPA testing and metering, and the well’s current allotment limits how many cabins it can serve.
Village Manager Brett Ware told the committee he has a memo from the Office of the State Engineer that "officially transfers the water well on the wellness property to the Village of Angel Fire." He said the transfer begins a process to convert the well’s status from a domestic well to a public (municipal) well and outlined the steps the village must take before wide municipal use.
Ware said the well is currently recorded as a domestic permit allowing 1 acre-foot; members had previously thought it might be 3 acre-feet. He said that converting to municipal use will require casing work, an inspection, chlorination and a series of tests to meet municipal standards and EPA reporting requirements. “We’re gonna probably have to spend 5 or $6 on tests that have to be submitted to the EPA before we can, officially utilize this as a municipal well,” he said, and added that testing previously took about six weeks in a comparable project.
Ware said that an engineer (Krishna Hayar, formerly city engineer for Roswell) reviewed usage and the manager reported a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicating the well could serve as many as 10 cabins under the domestic-well assumptions. "We did a calculation... the maximum of 10 cabins for that well," he said, but stressed the figure is an estimate and that metering and further engineering will determine final capacity.
Committee members and staff discussed the need to obtain the drilling company’s engineering diagrams for the well casing and to confirm whether additional water rights are needed. The manager noted that buying or leasing additional water rights is possible but can be expensive, and that the village’s existing municipal acre-feet allocation does not automatically increase with drilling more wells.
The manager said village public works staff are already working on inspections and orders for tests; he estimated the overall conversion process will take several months and should not prevent limited use of the well in the near term. The committee asked staff to follow up on casing diagrams and engineering documentation as they continue permitting and infrastructure planning.
The committee thanked Ware for the update and moved on to scheduling and closing business.
