New Mexico wildfire, landslides smother city’s drinking water supply

A year ago, Maria Gilvarry’s job as utilities director for Las Vegas, N.M., was more or less routine. 

But then the worst fire in state history scorched the region. A few months later, relentless monsoons pushed hillsides of dirt, debris and soot into the city’s watershed, rendering much of it undrinkable.

Before long, Gilvarry was juggling seven-day workweeks and fielding calls from media outlets including CNN and NPR, all wanting to know more about the unimaginable: A city of 13,000 had less than a month’s supply of drinking water left. 

“It’s been a roller coaster,” she said.

Record-breaking wildfire ravages watershed

In late April, the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fire, caused by a poorly planned federally prescribed burn, seemed to skirt Las Vegas’s watershed. 

“We knew it was going to impact our watershed, but I expected it to be relatively minor,” said Gilvarry, who has worked as the city’s utilities director for six years. Within days, the winds had shifted, and the fire blazed straight toward town.

Gilvarry and her family evacuated, finding refuge from a colleague with a spare camper on his property while other co-workers took care of their pets. Then she joined her eight water treatment staff members and employees from the other six divisions she oversees to protect all the water infrastructure they could. 

Once the 340,000-acre fire had eased, a water-treatment nightmare ensued along the fragile Gallinas River watershed. Late summer brought unusually wet monsoons, sending carbon-rich dirt and debris into the city’s main water source, the Gallinas River, as well as one of two primary reservoirs. 

The water soon became too contaminated to treat, and officials scrambled to build a temporary pretreatment system and tap into its quickly depleting last reservoir.

Officials implemented Stage 7 drought restrictions, limiting each resident to 44 gallons of water per day. Car washes voluntarily closed, people showered with buckets, and restaurants served bottled water instead of tap. Federal officials trucked in bottled water, and staff monitored meters daily, looking for high users, though it was never much of an issue.

“This wasn’t something you had to tell people about,” Gilvarry said. “Our river flows through town, and when the rains started coming, anyone who was near the river or an arroyo could see it was black once the river receded. And you couldn’t miss the fires that had lit up the night sky. There was a lot of fear and concern.”

At one point in September, so much polluted sludge flowed into the river and reservoir that the town had 20 days of drinking water left. 

Optimism returns with recovery

But the crisis is lifting. The monsoons have let up and the pretreatment system is working. Testing showed that water in a nearby reservoir was safe to send to the city’s treatment plant, and residents have exceeded the city’s conservation goals. Now Las Vegas has several months’ worth of drinking water and is managing with Stage 6 drought restrictions.

But there’s still a long way to go.

The utility now needs a long-term treatment system to deal with the increased sediment load that will plague the area for decades. That comes with a price tag upwards of $100 million, an impossible amount for a utility with a $4 million annual budget, Gilvarry said.

Fortunately, officials expect federal funding to cover most of the infrastructure improvements, and the utility will be better prepared for the next wildfire.

Also on the bright side, Gilvarry has firsthand experience with the indomitable human spirit. 

“Trust your community, trust your employees,” she said. “When you need something, make sure they are aware of the need, and everybody will come together and provide the input and the ideas to solve it.” 

For example, residents who were already averaging about 50 gallons of water per day per person — a little more than half of the average American — managed to find even more ways to cut back, she said. 

And by early July, with help from FEMA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and state and local officials, crews had built massive steel fencing to restrain an avalanche of trees, rocks and other materials, to prevent water infrastructure damage from rainstorms.
 
“We went from concept to design to contracts being written to boots on the ground within four weeks,” Gilvarry said. “But we didn’t have a choice. The monsoons were coming.”

Ordeal strengthens emergency response plan

Coincidentally, city officials had submitted their emergency response plan to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in December 2021, four months before the fire, Gilvarry said. Though the plan did not detail actions for a fire and subsequent monsoons of this magnitude, it laid a strong foundation for their response, and now officials have real-life scenarios with which to improve their plan. 

“This is about all of us moving forward and looking at our weaknesses so if this does happen again, we can address it,” Gilvarry said. “What you least expect to happen can still happen. We’re proof of that.”

She gets a chuckle when people say they’ve seen her on CNN. 

“I’m answering questions from whoever calls,” she said. “I’ve heard from independent film makers, NPR, national newscasters. We want people to know about this. At first, it seemed like no one even knew the fire was happening.”  

And she was impressed by the speed at which the National Guard, FEMA, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and state officials helped secure the city’s water supply.

“The fire was not in our control, but our response to the fire is in our control,” she said. “We’re not going to let this knock us out. We’ll come back stronger and better so we can recover from the damage.”