Residents of Sunland Park and Santa Teresa are deeply troubled by the ongoing issues with the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority (CRRUA) water supply. Despite repeated assurances from CRRUA, community members continue to face problems with arsenic contamination, discolored water, health concerns and escalating water rates.
For years, many CRRUA customers have experienced yellow and brown water flowing from our taps, raising concerns about the safety of our drinking water. We have experienced persistent rashes, hair loss, and dry skin; our water is discolored and smells of sulfur. The presence of inorganic arsenic compounds in the water is particularly alarming, given their highly toxic nature and potential for causing both acute and long-term health issues, including cancer.
As community members, we have educated ourselves about the water issues and noticed CRRUA and the region has had a long history of violations since 2001. We attended meetings with former CRRUA Director Brent Westmoreland and current Director Juan Carlos Crosby and discovered that the arsenic treatment plants had been down for a year and a half. The bypass of the arsenic removal tanks for such a long time without notifying us only heightens our concerns about our family members’ health, as we were blatantly being poisoned.
CRRUA has acknowledged arsenic levels exceeding federal standards, yet their communications have often downplayed the severity of the crisis, instructing residents that no immediate action was needed, with the exception of guiding customers to speak to their healthcare professional. This dismissive attitude towards our health and wellbeing is unacceptable.
Moreover, we are being asked to pay more for unsafe drinking water. This financial burden is particularly heavy on working-class families already struggling to make ends meet. Some of us are on fixed, low incomes and can’t afford to buy bottled water.
The lack of transparency from CRRUA exacerbates these issues. Meetings meant to address our concerns provide vague and unsatisfactory responses by CRRUA leadership. When residents presented discolored water samples at a recent meeting, CRRUA’s Interim Director, at the time, suggested simply flushing our taps, ignoring the broader, systemic problem.
We want to hear directly from CRRUA leadership about their plan to repair the broken system and to restore the community’s trust. We are also calling on our local, state and federal elected officials to intervene on our behalf to arrange a public meeting hosted by CRRUA to hear residents’ concerns. Requests have been made to Representative Ray Lara, Senator Joseph Cervantes, and Congressman Gabe Vasquez to support the scheduling of a public meeting with CRRUA leadership.
We appreciate that Congressman Vasquez recently invited us to meet with him, but have multiple questions about the $2.5 million request for federal funding he submitted to renovate CRRUA’s water infrastructure. How long will it take for that money to get us clean, safe drinking water? While we were pleased to be invited to meet with him, CRRUA, and New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) staff, it felt tokenizing and disrespectful to barely let us speak. Our elected officials can and must do better.
Similar to many others in our community, we rely heavily on trips to El Paso for bottled water. Some of us spend $70 per month or more on bottled water on top of our water bill. We wish we didn’t have to shower or bathe in this water, but it’s too expensive to bathe with bottled water. Many of our community members are elderly and are not strong enough to carry 5-gallon water bottles, so they end up just drinking the contaminated tap water.
Until we feel we can trust that our tap water is clean and safe—and it looks, smells and tastes clean and safe—we demand that CRRUA take immediate and concrete steps to ensure the safety of our water supply. This includes implementing effective arsenic treatment upgrades, reducing water rates until quality water is guaranteed, and maintaining open, honest communication with residents. During the interim, CRRUA and NMED should provide our communities with free bottled water or water tanks.
It’s time for CRRUA and NMED to treat access to clean, safe drinking water as a fundamental human right. We will no longer tolerate neglect and obfuscation. Our health and future depend on it.
Vivian Fuller, Mark Alonzo and Lia Rasberry are residents of Santa Teresa; Daisy Maldonado is Director of Empowerment Congress which is based in Las Cruces and works with residents living in Sunland Park.