The City of Santa Fe has a wastewater facility that is nearing retirement age, and officials are slowly getting closer to making a big decision:
Will the city continue to maintain the 61-year old plant, or bite the bullet and replace it with a completely new one at a potential cost over ten years of about $600 million?
That’s how the choice was laid out last night at a meeting of the City Council’s Public Works and Utilities Commitee.
After a presentation given by John Rehring, a consultant with Colorado-based Carollo Engineers, the five city councilors on the committee all admitted feeling a bit of shock about the price tag.
At the same time, they all expressed some measure of feeling that full replacement appears to be the best long-term solution.
In recent years, staff at the Paseo Real Wastewater Reclamation Facility have struggled to keep it working well enough to stay in compliance with environmental standards.
Earlier this year the state issued an order outlining how Santa Fe had violated state water quality regulations and fined it $2.3 million.
The director of the Santa Fe Department of Public Utilities, John Dupuis, acknowledged last night that the public’s trust in the city’s ability to solve the problem has eroded.
He made it pretty clear he feels that that trend would be reversed by constructing a brand new plant.
“Do we want to prepare for the needs of the future by building public trust and having facilities that use the best technology?" he said.
"And we get practice with our staff, implementing those over time, and it builds public trust and then the ability to readily and reliably meet compliance standards? Or do we continue on something that is the bare minimum and just barely above it?”
Among the options presented by the consultant John Rehring is repairing the current plant instead of replacing it.
That would cost the city less money in the short term but would still likely get as high as about $250 million.
And there might still be challenges with staying in compliance.
Completely replacing it would have to happen in phases, with the first year spent retooling the existing plant to the tune of about $60 million while gathering more data to inform the ultimate decision about replacement.
Councilor Michael Garcia said that if a new plant is the best way to go, city officials would have to come up with some kind of way of funding it.
“I look at the sticker shock of 600 million. That is the disappointing situation we're in with that treatment plant," Garcia said.
"I believe we cannot leave this disintegrating treatment plant for future generations. Let's get them set up properly. If it comes at that price tag, that's where it's our responsibility then to figure out where we get the money from.”
Public Utilities Department director Dupuis argued that going with a new wastewater facility will not only be a better long-term solution for Santa Fe, but could put the city in a position where it set an example for other municipalities as water becomes ever more scarce.
“I see wastewater and water connected, where they're just one, like 60 years to a hundred years from now," said Dupuis.
"We'll be in the frame of reference with climate change and dwindling supply available to the community of New Mexico, such that if we position ourselves well, instead of fighting for the next piece of water supply, we're partnering to enable more water supply available to others because we did our homework.”
Dupuis says City Council should have enough information to make the wastewater plant repair vs. replace decision within 6 to 12 months.
A key step during that upcoming period, said Dupuis, will be some sort of public comment period to give residents a chance to weigh in on what has been one of the city’s most vexing challenges.
