Grady considering withdrawal from water authority

A second smaller-member community may withdraw from the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority.

Grady Mayor Wesley Shafer said in Tuesday’s ENMWUA board meeting that the village council would consider the departure at its Aug. 12 meeting. This follows the recent word from Melrose Mayor Barry Green that its own village council had “voted to begin the steps of withdrawing” last month.

Shafer told The News on Friday the consideration was partly based on Melrose’s withdrawal and also from an assessment of where ENMWUA’s Rural Water Project was heading, its timeline and the village’s eventual portion of the water supply.

“We’ve got 35 acre feet; that’s not going to make much difference in the water line, “ Shafer said. “The council has been kind of wanting to pull out, and we talked about it and I think that’s the wisest move we can make. We can save that money and use it for somewhere else we need.”

The Ute Pipeline Project aims to ultimately connect ENMWUA’s member communities with 16,450 acre feet of water annually from the Ute Reservoir in Quay County, intended as a long-term alternative to the declining Ogallala Aquifer.

Of that annual yield, Grady and Melrose were due to receive 35 and 150 acre feet, respectively. Each of those two community shares is less than 1 percent of the overall reservoir yield, with Clovis to receive 74.72% (12,292 acre feet per year), Portales 20.87% (3,433 acre feet per year) and the rest split varyingly among the remaining member communities of Curry County, Roosevelt County, Texico and Elida.

Annual member contributions are based partly on that share, and Melrose and Grady received invoices last week for fiscal year 2020 contributions of $18,303 and $4,271, respectively.

“Our water situation is not bad at all,” Shafer said of the existing supplies and reserves in Grady. “We have three wells and they’re all three pumping, our water table hasn’t dropped any, and I don’t think we’ll see the water coming from Logan at the caprock in my lifetime. ... I’ve been involved with Grady water for some 20 years and we haven’t had any problems at all.”

Shafer expressed concern with recent construction work from ENMWUA focusing on “building water line south of Cannon Air Force Base instead of building the line coming up.”

ENMWUA Chair David Lansford responded to similar concerns in previous board meetings this summer, stating the authority’s focus at the moment was in establishing infrastructure for interim water supplies from the paleochannel while long-term work on the reservoir connection up north advanced.

ENMWUA Administrator Orlando Ortega said he was “saddened” by Grady and Melrose talk of withdrawing but respects their mayors’ decisions since “these leaders of these communities know their communities better than we do.”

Formally withdrawing from ENMWUA membership and attendant obligations may take some time, and Green said in his July 22 letter to Ortega that Melrose village attorney Stephen Doerr would “assist and guide us in the process.”

Green will sit on the board of the authority until that process is complete, said Ortega, but did not attend Tuesday’s ENMWUA meeting. Portales Mayor Ron Jackson and newly appointed Clovis City Commissioner Juan Garza did not attend either.

Green and Doerr did not respond to messages Friday from The News.

“We are saddened by the fact that the Melrose Council has voted to exit the ENMWUA and that Grady is now considering doing the same,” Ortega said in a statement Friday on the recent developments. “We certainly respect our member communities’ decisions with this important matter and will support them with the necessary steps moving forward. The ENMWUA has made significant progress within the past several months and will continue to move forward with this vitally important project.”