(west side) Journal gives Pajarito Mesa community, and SWOP, Props!

The West side Journal gave the Pajarito Mesa props last Thursday, and SWOP too.


Thursday, May 29, 2008

Cheers to Water On Pajarito Mesa

By

Please raise a glass to toast the hard work of the Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association of Pajarito Mesa. After eight long years and several false starts, the landowners up on the dry mesa above the South Valley have signed a deal bringing water to their off-the-grid community.

At a festive groundbreaking last Saturday, about 150 people celebrated a $750,000 agreement that will construct a fill station to be supplied by a new water reservoir at the foot of the mesa. The project is expected to be completed by February.

This wasn't an easy victory. For years, a 28-square-mile section of Pajarito Mesa has been gradually filling with people, even though there is no electricity or water on the mesa. With no county rights of way to divide the area's 10-acre parcels, it has been impossible to build paved roads.

An estimated 500 to 1,500 people live in mobile homes or hand-built houses on the wind-swept mesa. Some have sunk their own wells, but the majority of residents are water-haulers who drive down to the valley and pay to fill up their containers at private wells— sometimes twice a day.

With help from Gov. Bill Richardson and the Southwest Organizing Project, the water association is going to put an end to all that— and just in time, as gas and diesel prices make each water-hauling trip more painful.

Association members will pay a monthly fee to be able to drive into a fenced fill station to be built by the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority and fill their tanks close to home. By piping the water from a new reservoir near Coors and Pajarito SW, the water authority will avoid the water-rights issues that complicated earlier efforts to drill a well for mesa-dwellers.

Speaking about the mesa's piecemeal development last year, County Commissioner Teresa Córdova was frank: "This is the toughest planning issue I have ever encountered," she said.

A community water supply is a vital first step toward a full infrastructure of community services on Pajarito Mesa— and it's the only step the county will be taking any time soon, Córdova made clear Saturday. Faced with pressing needs in the South Valley itself, "We're not bringing any other infrastructure up there," she said.
That makes sense. The mesa-dwellers who moved to their remote parcels over the years definitely got the cart of land ownership ahead of the horse called government services. That overworked horse will come along slowly.

Nonetheless, the Pajarito water association deserves credit for making progress against almost impossible odds. "We never gave up," said Sandra Montes, the tireless association president.

So let's raise our glasses high to the mesa's hardy residents, even though there won't be any water to fill those glasses until February. That's OK: People on Pajarito Mesa know how to wait.