State environmental regulators say they have a deal to start cleaning up southern New Mexico’s troubled drinking water system. Residents say it feels more like putting a price tag on their mistrust.
This week, the New Mexico Environment Department announced a settlement with the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, or CRRUA, but people in Sunland Park and Santa Teresa insist the agreement does not make their tap water any safer to drink. Instead, they warn it could stick them with higher bills for water they still will not trust.
What the settlement covers
According to Source NM, the New Mexico Environment Department announced on Feb. 11 that CRRUA agreed to pay $189,000 to resolve alleged violations that include arsenic exceedances, failures to notify customers about high pH, and other sanitary-survey findings tied to broken equipment and a lack of training.
The department said part of the civil penalty will go into a fund for statewide water-quality testing and framed the settlement as a push to force the utility and its board to confront long-running problems.
Residents: fines are not a water plan
Residents told KVIA the deal feels cosmetic compared with what families have been living with…