Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Steve Hansen
QCS Managing Editor
The Tucumcari City Commission has authorized spending $18,000 to cover the city’s share of a study to determine whether Ute Lake can sustain an annual loss of more than 16,000 acre feet to the Eastern New Mexico Rural Water Utility Authority’s Ute Lake Project.
Independent study of Ute Lake’s long-term holding capacity was supposed to be funded through capital outlay funds authorized by the state legislature in the 2014 term. That $40,000 outlay, however, was was taken over by the Office of the State Engineer, which said it will use those funds to conduct its own study, bypassing involvement from Quay County interests,
including the city of Tucumcari, the village of Logan and the county.
The Quay County interests have decided to pool their own funds to collect $50,000 for a study of their own.
The study of the lake’s holding capacity, which the Tucumcari commission voted to support on Nov. 20, will become part of the city’s updated 40-year water plan, and the commission decided on Nov. 20 to authorize $7,000 for that study.
Quay County community representatives are concerned that sending more than 16,000 acre feet of water to Curry and Roosevelt counties every year could drain the lake below the level required to maintain recreational activities on the lake.
Mayor Robert Lumpkin said those activities support as many as 400 jobs in Quay County.
The commission also discussed two properties that owners have offered to donate to the city. City Manager Jared Langenegger suggested the city accept a donation of two empty lots at
Railroad Avenue and Ninth Street, which he said could advance economic development city.
The other property, an abandoned house in the 900 block of East Turner Avenue, should not be accepted, Langenegger said, based on an inspection that found the building my not be structurally sound. Repairing or tearing down the building, he said, would place a burden on the city.
The commission did not take action on either property.
In his city manager’s report, Langenegger mentioned the following items :
• his intention to keep “open office” hours from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays to hear ideas and concerns from Tucumcari residents who can drop in. The first of these sessions, he said, will be held Dec. 5.
• disucssions with the Quay County Animal Rescue organization about placing pictures of animals collected by the city’s animal control officers on the animal rescue’s website.
• the city’s advertising for the positions of senior center director and building code enforcement officer.
• discussions with Dr. Thomas Newsom of Mesalands Community College on partnership projects that involve students.
• a proposal from Tucumcari resident Gary Southern to develop a site to grow produce within the city.
• a meeting with the area’s emergency dispatch board in which decisions were made to keep the dispatch center in the Tucumcari Police Department for the time being and to begin shopping for a new computer-aided dispatch system, which would be paid for with funds from the gross receipts county voters approved in October.
• announcements at an Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority meeting that the Ute Water Project’s intake structure at Ute Lake should be completed by Dec. 15, and that the project’s second phase, a pipeline to collect water purchased from landowners in Roosevelt and Curry counties, is about 60 percent completed with its design and specifications phase.