El Creston Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association

News About El Creston

March 2021: Construction is nearly complete for Phase II. We will begin onstruction on Phase III, up Roadrunner and down Coyote soon.

September 2019: We have received funding from the Water Trust Board in order to begin construction of Phase II: North on Mira Sol, and east about 1/4 mile on county road A20. RFP's will be issued late fall.

January 2019: We are officially supplying water to seven homeowners along Mira Sol, with another seven scheduled to hook-up come spring. This has been a long process, but are thrilled that we actually have the system up and running. Next step is to expand the system along the county road.

May 2018 Last week's mediation meeting settled the issues with John Corn and El Creston. Corn,s attorney proved the telephone and electrical easements which were previous to our water line, was legitimate, but that the El Creston line was not. The water line now must be removed from Corn's property and we must stub it off on the Bourbon's property, a movement of approximately six and a half feet. In addition we must repair the Sarah Lane-Dorothy Lane junction where the erosion is severe. We must also remediate Dorothy Road, at an approximate cost of $6,200. In the meantime the state of New Mexico has halted Corn's protest to our well system and set it aside, so we can proceed with the activation of our well and deliver potable water to our customers. El Valle, a water alliance composed of dozens of small systems like ours and with real practiced experience in getting systems like our "up and running" will be our operator in the future. They have been invaluable to us in providing us with the tremendous paperwork that needs to be completed so a water system can meet state rigs.

Summer 2017 What seemed as distant as the stars in 2009 finally - just about - reached completion in the spring of 2017. A well of vast capacity and the first section of pipeline are all finished, ready to bring clean, safe water to households. Lawsuits by citizens and the City of Las Vegas prevent turning the key and letting the water flow. We expect to eliminate these obstacles in short order. Mira Sol and other roads need maintenance following the construction. Our contractor worked on Dorothy Lane, Sarah Lane, as well as Mira Sol. They also contributed $1,000 for further repairs. Unit 1's Home Owners Association will begin work on Mira Sol during the summer maintenance season to the extent it has funds. Rules and Regulations, as well as the Rate and Fee Schedule were adopted at the August board meeting. These documents are available on the El Creston website, http://www.elcreston.org/about/documents.html. We will be applying for funding this year to begin work on the next phase of bringing water to residents of the county road and Blue Ridge, including the Sheridan Fire Station.

May 11, 2016 Construction on the El Creston well is proceeding at a good pace. The work has been a bit slower than expected; however, we anticipate that reaming the well will be completed by the end of this week. casing will be done next week and we should be able to move straight to the pump test. We will also do another water quality test. The initial results indicated that we are high in total dissolved solids and sulfates, though our water is safe to drink. A new test is still likely to indicate we are somewhat high in these levels, but we want to confirm them.

March 1, 2016:Hays Plumbing has drilled to approximately 580 feet. They encountered a water bearing zone which produces approximately 60 gpm at 530 feet. Hays is currently repairing/replacing their discharge pipe before they proceed. They are scheduled to drill to approximately 780 feet.

60 gallons per minute should be sufficient quantity for our entire community; however, we will need the pump test to provide the final determination of the well productivity. Also, we will be sending out for another water quality test. We expect it to be very similar to that of our previous exploratory well.

December 19, 2015 Hays will deploy to the El Creston well site on Monday, January 4. The plugging of well will begin on Friday, January 8. It is anticipated that the plugging will be completed by Wednesday, January 13.

Once the plugging is completed, per the Office of State Engineer's request, we will submit an application for the new exploratory well. There is still some uncertainty on the timelines for that portion, so I cannot offer a date for drilling to start. Our general goal remains to have the construction of the first phase of the system (well, pump-house, tank, fill station, and initial distribution/connections) completed by July 1 and for it to be operational by Oct 1.

November 23, 2015 Construction: As many of you know, our unfinished community well must be plugged. It sat too long awaiting various redesign approvals and permits, causing the borehole to deteriorate and collapse in places. The State Engineer approved the plugging plan and we are just awaiting a schedule. Due to the complex nature of this operation, representatives of the Office of the State Engineer must be onsite during the plugging. Once the plugging is complete and a new exploratory well permit issues, drilling of a new well will commence in the immediate vicinity of the existing well. We estimate the complete phase 1 system can be completed by July 1 and in operation by October 1. Many of the issues that caused earlier delays are resolved, so at least the drilling portion of the operation should proceed more smoothly.

Funding application: El Creston will not submit a funding application to the Water Trust Board during this cycle. Furthermore, we will not submit any funding applications until the phase 1 system is in place. To be awarded Water Trust Board funding, we must have expended approximately 95% of our 2013 funding. It is unlikely we will achieve this by the time funding is awarded in March or April. Other funding entities require that our water source be in place and approved prior to moving our application forward. Obviously, we must demonstrate that we have water to sell in order to raise revenue and cover debt.

This year's (CY 2015)assessment mailing is going out late. I got behind on things and also tool a little extra time to clean up my address list. The assessment is $60 for the year and is due on Dec 31. The assessment provides revenue that is absolutely critical to our ability cover our organization's expenses, which include various annual filing fees, insurance, and audit costs.

October 4, 2015. Due to the poor condition of our community well's borehole, the well will have to be plugged and abandoned. The well deteriorated due to sitting uncased for many months with high static water levels. It took several months for our engineers and the Office of the State Engineer to settle on an acceptable plan for dealing with the artesian nature of this well. The well is considered artesian because there is water at more than one level. The deterioration contributed to the twisting off of the reaming bit, which, in turn, could not be retrieved and thus prevented access to the lower, more productive water bearing formation. The upper formation cannot be developed because the need to seal it from the lower layer requires that the seal extend into a portion of the upper producing formation. That, along with other considerations, reduced the likelihood of successfully exploiting the upper layer. A plugging plan has been submitted to the Office of the State Engineer and once that plan is approved, the well will be plugged. Once the well is plugged, drilling of a new well nearby will commence. I do not have a reliable estimate for how long this process will take.

September 1, 2015. El Creston is suspending efforts to recover the broken bit in its well. Efforts to extract the bit were unsuccessful due to crumbling of the bore hole and swollen clay layers along the bore hole. Further efforts to extract the bit risked complete destruction of the well, along with the potential to damage the extraction equipment. There were additional safety concerns.

I met with Souder Miller staff and Hays Plumbiing to discuss what we should do next. It appears that we may be able to salvage the well to obtain water from the upper zone. Although that zone only produces an estimated 15 gallons per minute, that amount is sufficient for most of the northern portion of our service area. Developing this portion of the well could be done with little or no delay to our schedule. We would then examine further options related to drilling another well.

I will meet with Souder Miller, Hays, the State Engineer, and the Environment Department on Thursday, when we will examine this and any other options for continuing the project. I have emphasized that we cannot afford any further delays and any resolution must quickly lead to the build out of our distribution system.

While this is certainly a disappointing turn of events, I am confident that we will get our project back on track quickly.

August 27, 2015. The El Creston MDWCA Board of Directors met yesterday evening to review, discuss and select a preferred alternative to continuing the community water project. A summary of the analysis of alternatives is available Here. After a good discussion and input from the membership, the Board voted to recommend alternative #2, continuation of the project as originally planned.

July 2015 Update

1. Our expansion of our well in preparation for the pump test was shut down last January by the Office of the State Engineer. They changed an earlier determination regarding the need for an Operations Plan to address how cross-flow water from the two water bearing encountered by our well will be prevented. This delay also necessitates a new exploratory well permit from the OSE. The OSE hydrology office is currently extremely short-staffed. That said, we have reminded them that we cannot afford any further delay as funding deadlines and winter weather approach.


3. Moving forward, we have started/resumed funding applications to complete the build-out of the northern part of the service area. Funding applications to the US Department of Agriculture and NM Environment Department are in development. We will also prepare another application to the Water Trust Board. All together, those applications could lead to nearly $200,000 in additional debt, so improving our membership levels will be vital.

The establishment and operation of El Creston MDWCA over the past five years has been an exceptionally challenging endeavor. Though we have not yet reached our initial water service goal, we have brought water to many members in our community who would have otherwise suffered immensely, possibly losing their homes. Our rigorous attention to various regulatory compliance requirements has given us credibility among funding and regulatory agencies. This paid off when we recently made a late application for delaying some of our debt payment and has streamlined the processing of some of our other support requests.