The Village of Tijeras has partnered with the Entranosa Water and Wastewater Association for funding to purchase a new pipeline that will connect two new wells to the Estancia Basin transmission system.
During the Village of Tijeras Council’s March 18 meeting, councilors amended a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Entranosa and Tijeras for the new project. The Legislature appropriated $332,000 to the New Mexico Environment Department to fund Entranosa’s project.
The MOU states that Entranosa requires a qualified local body to receive the legislative appropriation for the project. Entranosa requested that Tijeras oversee the project since Tijeras has “the necessary expertise, staff and experience to oversee the procurement process including the issuance of contracts and payment for services for the project.”
Jack Crider, CEO of Entranosa, which supplies water service opportunities in the East Mountain and Estancia Basin regions, said the organization is ineligible for state funding since it is a nonprofit and is treated as a private company.
Crider said that in 2022, voters passed a constitutional amendment that would make cooperative associations eligible for state funding, but legislators failed to implement the necessary legislation for the amendment that year and in 2023 and 2024.
“We were still not eligible, but this capital outlay was written up in Tijeras’ name,” Crider said. “We thought, well, Tijeras is eligible, they should be able to get those funds and wrote up that MOU saying that ‘Tijeras would own it and we would pay them back over the life of that pipe.’”
The purpose of the MOU is for the village to own the project and lease it to Entranosa under the document’s terms. The terms state that Tijeras will lease the materials for the project to Entranosa for 50 years, based on the 50-year useful life of the pipeline. Entranosa will then pay the village $7,000 a year.
Tijeras Mayor Jake Bruton said the state authorized organizations like Entranosa to apply for capital outlay funding with no protocols allowing them to spend that money. While Tijeras does not consume water from the basin, they are assisting Entranosa and acting as its fiscal agent.
“They are a community partner that we’ve worked with before and came up with a way we thought would work to make sure they can spend those funds and went forward with it to be a good neighbor and be a good community,” Bruton said.
Crider said there is no scheduled date for when the project will begin because the village is still in the process of sending the MOU to the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration for approval and a grant agreement. He said that once started, the project will positively impact residents who use water from the Estancia Basin.
“We’ve been steadily investing in the last 20 years in the central part of the Estancia Basin,” Crider said. “We have five wells there that are actively pumping and then these two new wells that will be coming online to better water quality with low hardness. It’s just critical as these older wells drop off, that we have other wells to support it. We have about 3.8 million gallons of water storage and 3,750 connections, which is basically 1,000 gallons per residential connection so we’re doing okay, but as the area continues to grow, we’re gonna need more water and storage.”