July 28, 2022: A message from the BMDWCA President
After William Silva’s resignation from the Board of Directors, the board appointed Ryan Costanza as a director at the July 2, 2022 regular meeting. Ryan brings a wealth of knowledge on infrastructure and has already proven himself a valuable, thoughtful asset to the board. Thank you, Ryan.
We have received our Certificate of Project Completion for the new well from the New Mexico Drinking Water Bureau. This was a two-year endeavor begun by the previous board, and they did most of the hard work to make it happen. BMDWCA owes them a debt of gratitude.
That being said, the system is still not leak free. ln fact, a leak was found yesterday on the consumers side of their meter which was draining a large amount of water. This leak was most likely due to improper closing of the stop-and-waste valve, which happens quite often. (lt is difficult to find these leaks because we have to manually open each member’s meter to see if water is flowing. This is very time-consuming and physically taxing.) l’m going to see if our water operator, Levi Sandoval, will write a set of directions for the process of closing your stop-and-waste valves, or possibly make a video.
We ask you to continually monitor your cabin for leaking faucets, running toilets, incorrectly shut stop-and-waste valves, and undetected leaks (particularly after-winter reopening). Another leak was found today by noticing water running across a driveway. Please notify the board if you notice a possible leak.
The “boil water” advisory that was issued late last year has been removed for some time (although we hear people report they continue to see this warning) and the chlorine tests on the water in our system are well within State specifications.
All the above is the easy stuff to tell you. Now for the difficult news. The Board of Directors has approved a rate increase in all user fees of 40%. Users’ fees will be $602.00 plus tax per year. This is slightly over $50.00 per month. Non-user and commercial fees follow suit–$154.00 and $1050.00 plus tax respectively. The NMED Construction Programs Bureau made it known that without the rate increase, we would be operating in the red (the new well loan begins repayment this year and is more than $11,400 per year). Keep in mind that this is the first rate increase since 2404.
The board was elected barely two months ago but is beginning to evaluate infrastructure improvements to make the system more reliable and to make leak detection more rapid. Among the first improvements might be electronic readout meters that will allow checking of all connections rapidly (i.e., a few hours) to quickly identify leaks or excessive use on the consumer side of the meters. We are evaluating State and Federal loan and grant programs that can help bring infrastructure improvements to fruition.
The mailing address for BMDWCA has been changed to HC 75 Box 105, Chama, NM 87520.
Our Board is meeting regularly and we encourage you to attend. The date and agenda of the meetings will be posted on our website, and minutes of our past meetings are posted there also. We have received complaints about the website and are working to improve it.
Respectfully, Bob Cooke