Q&A: Portales public utility director talks water emergency

Editor's note: This is one in a continuing series of interviews with local officials. John DeSha has been the public utility director for the city of Portales since 2011.

Q: As of right now, what is the status on the water emergency in Portales? Has it gotten any better in the past week? Worse?

A: The status on the wellfield really hasn't changed. We can't produce any more water than we did before. But we do have some encouraging information. The conservation efforts are working. We're able to maintain the tanks right now, and we're able to do it without stress in the wellfield. But that's all due to the fact that we've been able to reduce the demand considerably.

Q: And how do you measure that?

A: What we do is look at how the wellfield is operating. So we have a certain number of wells that are operating at any given time. And during this time of year, whenever the emergency started, we had every well running. And we were not able to keep up. The tanks were continually dropping. So when we declared the emergency and got everybody to stop watering their yards, washing their cars, those kinds of things, then we noticed that it started getting better. We were able to keep the tanks full. As the conservation efforts have gone forward, we've noticed that we haven't had as much stress put on the wellfield as we have in the past. We monitor how much those wells can produce every month. And we've actually seen a slight amount recovered in the last few weeks that we hadn't seen in the previous few weeks.

Q: Help us understand how you determine a water emergency? What parameters are used to help the city understand how much water is available?

A: We have our drought contingency plan that we follow. It tells us under these certain conditions, what we need to do. It says that in Stage Three, that that's when you have no outdoor irrigation by automatic sprinklers or even hoses and sprinklers that you can water by hand, your trees, shrubs, vegetable gardens. Then we just ask people not to wash the cars in their driveways. You actually use considerably less water going to a car wash to wash your car than you do in your driveway.

Q: How have city residents been about following the rules limiting outdoor water use? Has it been a good effort from citizens?

A: Absolutely. There are always a few people that are a bit hesitant to do it. But by and large, the city has really come together and made a huge difference. In fact, it's due to them that we're in the situation that we're in now, that's tolerable. It gets us in a position where we don't feel like we're going to have any major failures in the wellfield right now.

Q: Has the city cut off water flow (or reduced flow) to any individuals or businesses as a result of failing to follow the rules? If so, how many?

A: I don't know the exact number. There was a considerable number in the very beginning. And a lot of it came down to making sure people got the message. We had a number of people that, to be honest with you, didn't know how to operate their sprinkler systems. If we found that you were violating the water rationing, we would hang a tag, and let you know what was going on. And then if it happened again, then we would turn your water off. All you had to do was contact us and we turned the water back on. If they did it again, that's when we would pull the meter. To this point, I don't believe we've had to pull anybody's meters. We've had to turn a few people off. Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of less than 200 over this whole thing. And we have almost 5,000 accounts.

Q: The city reduced flow to the Roosevelt County Water Coop by 200,000 gallons per day last week. Has that changed in recent days? Are co-cop officials in contact with you about restoring that water flow or what's the latest with that situation?

A: (answered by City Manager, Sarah Austin) The city did reduce the flow in an effort to work toward water conservation efforts. The only co-op official in contact with me is Ursula (Parker, the co-op's general manager). She is very responsive and willing to work with us. She genuinely cares about the future of her co-op for her customers.

Q: Hot summers and drought are the norm throughout the Southwest. Why is Portales' water situation seemingly worse than Clovis and other areas where little to no restrictions have been placed on water customers?

A: It's just the simple fact that the aquifer is declining. We've been very fortunate in past years to be able to maintain a pumping level where we could keep up with it. The aquifer and our part of our area is just declining. As far as Clovis, I can't really speak on them. I don't know what's going on. If you look in the news, it's across the Southwest, everybody from California to Texas, is moving into drought management. We've been expecting this over the years. That's why we've made efforts to improve the wellfield as much as we can. We're making efforts to expand the wellfield as well.

Q: Do you envision restrictions being lifted any time soon for Portales customers?

A: Until the conditions in the wellfield change where we can produce more, then I honestly can't say that I do. I would like to say that it's going to get better. But I don't think that it will until we can add more wells.

Q: What is the city doing to increase water supply for the coming years and decades? We're told the pipeline from Ute Reservoir won't be providing water until 2031. Is some kind of relief coming before then?

A: That's our hope. What we're doing is we're working toward acquiring new wells. And even then, it takes a while to do that. Also moving out into undeveloped areas of state land ... We plan to access the areas east and south of our well field and work with the state agencies to develop new wells where possible.

- Compiled by Landry Sena, the Staff of the News