It was Solstice, June 21, and Mick Trujillo, a good friend and community activist from Abiquiú called at about 3 p.m. He said, “When are you going to Disneyland with your grandkids? I told him, “I just got here. We got a B&B at Seal Beach. Mick said, “ Well, I hate to tell you this, but a huge storm came last night and changed the course of the Chama River. The river jumped its boundaries and spread south into a mile-and-a-half-wide flow of mud and silt, destroying everything in its path from below Abiquiú to Hernandez. Many acequias have been wiped out and nothing is functioning.”
On that evening eight inches of rain fell in Medanales within a two hour period in the middle of the night. When families woke up on Friday morning, their entire homes, barns, and fields were flooded or covered in silt and mud. I immediately called the governor’s office and Rio Arriba County officials.
The county was in the process of calling a special meeting of the commission with the required two-day notice and Monday, the county commissioners declared a state of emergency and sent the request to the governor. I called Mike Hamman, NM state engineer, who stated that they had been up there that morning with the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to survey the damage. He stated, “We’ve never seen anything quite like this, it’s imperative that we restore the channel to its original condition as soon as possible in order to restore the acequias to operable conditions. And it’s important the people understand that this water supply is central for downstream irrigators as well. The Army Corps of Engineers had cut the release of water from Abiquiú Dam to 100 cubic feet per second(cfs), down from 1,200 cfs per second that morning.”
I then called Senator Leo Jaramillo to check out our sources and he stated that seven mobile homes had been damaged and that the Red Cross was assisting those families. I simultaneously notified the governor’s office. They had already sent out the state engineer, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation on Friday morning to survey the damage and to come up with a plan. Rio Arriba County had scheduled an emergency meeting for June 24.
In addition, they had put the County Fire Marshal Enrico Trujillo as the county contact for emergency services on task to collect the names, numbers, and emails of impacted residents within the Medanales flood area for future information and emergency services. TV and radio coverage of the Ruidoso conflagration raging in the southeast overwhelmed any news of the flooding in the north.
I asked myself: How were we going to help these citizens? How long would it take? How much money would it cost? Who’s in charge of what? And what can we do with the New Mexico anti-donation clause staring us in the face? From my couch in Seal Beach I kept calling people including Mick Trujillo, Rick and Liddie Martinez of Hernandez, Daryl Madrid, Tim Seaman, Robert Chavez, Jane Mahon, Don Martinez Marcos Valdez (many more) trying to put the puzzle together. I flew home Monday evening arriving at 9 p.m.
By Tuesday morning the state Homeland Security Office came to check out the flood and helped the county prepare their request for an emergency declaration and it was approved that afternoon by the governor. I began calling private foundations to ask for emergency money to assist families whose homes had been devastated by the flood.
We had made progress. By June 24 Marcos Valdez, the director of the East Rio Arriba County Soil and Conservation District informed me that Soil and Conservation Districts are the only state government entity that could go onto private property and assist owners with debris and silt removal. They could clear private driveways at farms and ranches. They could clean out acequias mutilated by this flood.
He said, “There’s a federal agency called the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and they have the money we need. But there’s a catch, I think it’s going to take about a million and we need a 25% state match.”
I told Marcos, “Guess what? Rep. Meredith Dixon and I sponsored NM state legislation creating a $75 million match fund for federal grants to local agencies, so I think we may just get this. You check with the NRCS and I’ll check with the governor’s office. Call back if you get an answer.”
By June 27 the DFA had confirmed that if we got a NRCS grant it would be eligible for a state match and Marcos Valdez was in the process of requesting assistance from the NRCS, Friday.
The main question remained, could we change the course of the river back to its previous condition? The answer came on July 1. Mike Hamman suggested I contact Christopher Trujillo, with the U.S. Reclamation Bureau. He informed me that “There are only a few machines in this country that can go into a river and change the course and they are located in Texas and Louisiana. Two of these machines are being taken apart and being loaded onto eight huge transport trucks as we speak, and they are bringing them to New Mexico. When they get here, we estimate that it will take about four weeks to rectify this problem.”
Of course, all of this was happening to a relatively small area with a small population while 1,000 families in Ruidoso had lost their homes and loved ones, and ravaging flood waters set up a second disaster response. In addition, floods in Mora and Las Vegas resumed and it’s as if our state is in the middle of a full court press disaster relief response.
Though there’s a plan, it won’t come soon enough for most people, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. However, much work remains to be done. As a New Mexico state legislator who works alone, with a laptop, sketchy WiFi and a cellphone, I’m grateful to our Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, Senator Leo Jaramillo, and the many public servants who step up and take on enormous responsibilities in meeting a crisis.
For me, there are some obvious legislative priorities. Four years ago, I proposed legislation that would create a third water project fund called the Rural Infrastructure Fund (RIF). Designed much like the Tribal Infrastructure Fund and Las Colonias the RIF would provide a 4.6% allotment from the Severance Tax Fund for rural water systems of about $36 million a year. I’ve told legislators that I cannot “capital-outlay my way out of the need for rural water infrastructure.” This is only one example.
Also, it’s time to call for a constitutional amendment eliminating the anti-donation clause. We are one of a few states that has this clause left over from the effort to curb 19th and early 20th Century atrocities created by eastern robber barons.