NM cities say drinking water and sewer projects stuck in legislative bottleneck

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An aeration basin at the Southside Water Reclamation Plant in Albuquerque. Sewer projects this year became eligible for public financing from the New Mexico Finance Authority’s Water Project Fund. (Courtesy Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority)

The organization that represents all 106 incorporated cities and towns across New Mexico wants state lawmakers to speed up the process the state government uses to approve drinking water and sewage infrastructure projects.

The state Water Trust Board makes loans and grants using the Water Project Fund.

The nonprofit New Mexico Municipal League is asking lawmakers to consider temporarily suspending the legal requirement that Water Project Fund plans receive their approval during legislative sessions, which only occur once per year.

The board evaluates drinking water project applications by the end of October each year; however, the league argues this legislative bottleneck means money isn’t released to local communities until the following March or April.

This has led to increased costs, the league says, including inflation, supply chain constraints and communities missing construction windows.

“The smaller the water system, the more difficult this process is,” said Marquita Russel, chief executive officer of the New Mexico Finance Authority, the state agency that oversees financing of public infrastructure projects.

The league wants lawmakers to allow NMFA to directly approve eligible Water Project Fund plans for three years, which it says would allow for money to be delivered more quickly and for projects to have better outcomes.

Even though the amount of public money going into the Water Project Fund has dramatically increased over the past six years in line with growing revenues from oil and gas extraction, local communities’ applications for funding have still exceeded the fund’s total amount, legislative analysts reported in May. In the most recent session, lawmakers added $200 million to the fund and for the first time allowed localities to use the money for sewer projects.

Across New Mexico, water systems need more than $3 billion for their drinking water infrastructure, according to a presentation on Wednesday by the Municipal League to the NMFA Oversight Committee.

Looking only at municipal water systems, the projects that cities have identified as needed over the next three years will cost at least $1.2 billion, according to the presentation. That only includes projects for which cities have applied for funding from the state Water Trust Board.

“Until the applications come in, we won’t know what that true need is,” said AJ Forte, executive director of the Municipal League, who by law also serves as vice chair of the Water Trust Board.

“I wish they would all apply, because then we could make the case to all of you: here’s the number that would be needed to get these systems up and running,” Forte told the committee. “We know it’s in the billions.”

Some examples include big cities like Albuquerque, which has more than $294 million in identified, unfunded drinking water projects, to small villages like Des Moines in northeast New Mexico, which needs just over $1.9 million for its drinking water infrastructure.

This post was originally authored and published by Austin Fisher from via RSS Feed. to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.