City weighs future of aging wastewater treatment plant

Jan. 27—Santa Fe's Public Utilities Department is pursuing an ambitious plan to build a new modular wastewater treatment plant, a facility officials inside and out of city government say is badly needed to replace the 61-year-old operation on Paseo Real.

"It erodes the confidence of the public that we can even do our job well," Public Utilities Department Director John Dupuis said of the ongoing problems at the plant, which at times have created maintenance nightmares, budgetary headaches and environmental concerns that have ripple effects both for the city and downstream communities in Santa Fe County.

Since last spring, the plant has suffered from a series of maintenance issues, causing the amount of E. coli bacteria measured in the effluent sent downstream into the Santa Fe River to spike well above levels set by state and federal environmental agencies.

Failing to treat the wastewater to the regulatory limits is not an option, leaving the city to decide whether to continually repair parts of the current plant as they break — an approach Dupuis referred to as the "Frankenstein" approach — or to make the expensive decision to build a brand-new facility that will cost in the hundreds of millions.

Dupuis said the latter option would include the exploration of a modular design, in which the new facility could be paid for and built in three or more stages while the existing plant remained in operation.

The city needs a plant with a capacity to process 6 million gallons of waste per day, which would cost an anticipated $210 million to $360 million to build, according to a Nov. 29 presentation from department officials to the City Council. Dupuis cautioned any dollar amount is only an estimate due to the current volatile nature of construction costs.

The current plant is equipped to treat 13.5 million gallons per day but currently handles a daily average of just 5 million. Due to aggressive conservation efforts, Santa Fe's water use has decreased over the past several decades as its population has grown, a point of pride for city officials. However, Dupuis said the ratio of solid waste to water going into the facility has become a problem for the aging plant.

"The plant we have isn't well set up to treat influence at that concentration, and new plants actually thrive with higher concentrations," he said.

Building a new plant is "a large upfront expense, but the overall cost ends up being much more efficient," Dupuis added.

The plant processes solid and liquid waste and then sends treated effluent downstream into the Santa Fe River, where effluent makes up 100% of the river's flow.

A first module for a new plant would be able to process 2 million gallons a day and is anticipated to cost about $88 million to bring online, the amount of money the city included in a request for funding to the Legislature.

Legislators say it's unlikely the full amount would be appropriated during this session, though Dupuis said he is hopeful the Santa Fe delegation will show they support the project by funding it to the extent they can.

The city also is pursuing a loan from the state Environment Department's Clean Water State Revolving Fund, a relatively new program providing low-interest loans for a variety of water and wastewater projects.

Dupuis said the city has secured a $70 million loan from the fund at an interest rate cheap enough to make it a better deal than using the money already building interest in the city's water and wastewater fund accounts.

"Just to give you an understanding of how significantly low this is, if we use $30 million and have it spread over 30 years, the interest on it is around $100,000," Dupuis said. "I've got a pump that we replaced last week that's $100,000. It's literally a drop in the bucket," especially when accounting for inflation.

The city also is pursuing federal dollars, Dupuis said, including a $20 million appropriation from the Army Corps of Engineers.

The City Council will have final say over any project: the Public Utilities Department is in the process of doing an additional evaluation on creating a new plant as part of its master plan and will bring a proposal forward sometime in March at the earliest, Dupuis said.

Mayor Alan Webber demurred when asked if he believes the city needs to build a new facility, saying he would wait until the final analysis is presented to the council.

However, he and others agree addressing the plant's problems is crucial. That includes state Rep. Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe, who said repairing or rebuilding the treatment plant is "not only a priority for the city but for the county."

Santa Fe County Commissioner Justin Greene was more direct.

"Santa Fe County is a downstream recipient of, pardon my French, the [expletive] that flows out of that facility," he said Monday.

Commissioners and city councilors have voiced a desire to work together regarding the plant's future at past public meetings. Multiple councilors urged city staff to reach out to the county at the Nov. 29 meeting, and at a Dec. 12 county commission meeting commissioners discussed each "adopting" a councilor to talk to about the facility.

In an interview in early January, Commissioner Anna Hansen said she strongly believes the city should build a new facility, characterizing the ongoing repairs as "throwing good money after bad."

"Commissioners care about the wastewater plant and we see this as something we could work together on to access federal money," Hansen said, noting she believes the federal government will be more willing to provide money if it sees the two entities are working together.

Webber said City Manager John Blair recently met with County Manager Greg Shaffer to discuss the issue.

Santa Fe-area legislators and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's office agree the issue is important, but also suggested the Legislature is not where the bulk of the money will be coming from.

"The wastewater treatment plant upgrade definitely is a priority for me, and I think it's something that our city really needs," said Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe. "An $88 million ask from capital outlay is not going to happen."

Wirth said he is working to secure an appropriation to cover the costs of planning and design for the new facility. He said he was told that would cost about $4 million, which he thinks is a realistic amount of money to secure.

Wirth met with U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández to put the issue on her radar. He and Romero both said they hope the city can find federal funding matches for the project.

"Funding with that size request is going to come from a whole variety of different buckets," Wirth said.

Maddy Hayden, spokeswoman for Lujan Grisham, wrote in an email the state Environment Department is already assisting Santa Fe with the project and "continues to be in conversation with the City about additional funding opportunities."

Mori Hensley, executive director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association, has been one of the most consistent voices outside the political sphere advocating for a new treatment plant, which she said would make the area's water future more resilient. She noted other cities, including Las Vegas, Nev., have turned their wastewater facilities into recreation areas that double as wildlife refuges and believes Santa Fe has the same opportunity.

Hensley for a year has been keeping tally of the levels of E. coli, data she receives from the city and then publicizes. Following a massive spike in effluent levels in the fall, caused by one of the plant's aerators breaking and an air feed rupture, levels more recently have been below the maximum limits set by regulators.

Dupuis cautioned just because the levels are in compliance right now doesn't mean the need for a resolution is any less dire, a sentiment Hensley shared.

"It's almost like shooting yourself in the foot when you put these quick fixes in," Dupuis said. "... I have to continually communicate that even if we are in the good range, that doesn't mean that all of a sudden the need to reconstruct the plant went away."

Hensley said creating a new plant will give the city the opportunity to show it is committed to being a good neighbor to downstream communities, which have borne the brunt of the Paseo Real facility's failures.

"The city has an opportunity to turn this crisis into a real opportunity for community health and resilience and pride," she said. "Not just an ongoing source of fear and anger."