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For the first time in the televised Albuquerque mayoral election debates, candidates’ attentions flowed to the issue of water resources and drought in the city.
The final televised debate of the mayoral race was hosted Monday night by New Mexico PBS.
In the debate, incumbent Richard Berry said water is a critical environmental issue in the city. Berry said he has continued to address water scarcity in Albuquerque, which has been an ongoing problem for years, through the San Juan-Chama Project.
“One of the best things that happened in Albuquerque decades ago is that we had leaders step up and start the process of the San Juan-Chama Project,” he said. “The city right now, because we’re in a drought, we’ll probably pull more from the aquifer. But the San Juan-Chama Project will create an opportunity for aquifers to actually rise over time.”
The San Juan-Chama Project was first proposed by city officials in the early 1990s because Albuquerque’s aquifer has been proven to be smaller than what was thought. The $400 million infrastructure created a 38-mile pipeline that pumps water from the Colorado River basin into the city. The project was completed in 2008.
Besides the project, Berry said the city should explore other water resource possibilities, such as the use of brackish water, which is more briny than fresh water, and desalinization, or removing salt from briny water.
Mayoral challenger Paul Heh, on the other hand, said that he would focus on desalinization of water from the Gulf of Mexico to solve the water crisis.
“Our aquifer is poisoned,” he said. “The secret is the only way to fix the aquifer is to have an alternative water source. My thought is this: If you can pop oil from Canada to the Gulf, then you can build a desalinization plan from the Gulf, and you can pop water from the Gulf to Albuquerque.”
Heh, who was almost forgotten by the moderator in the debate, attacked the mayor for mishandling the jet-fuel oil spill in the Kirtland Airforce Base.
In 2000, the city discovered a 40-year-old underground pipe that leaked about 24 million gallons of jet fuel into the city’s aquifer. By 2012, less than 500,000 gallons have been pumped out, according to the Huffington Post.
And the contamination is going deeper into the ground, Heh said.
“There is no alternative water source,” he said. “The pollution is getting deeper into the aquifer. It is now sinking deeper into the aquifer, and they can’t even explain why that is happening.”
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But Berry said he has already met with government officials about the issue. He said he has also spoken to military officials to speed up the pumping out of oil from the aquifer.
“The air force is taking important leadership in this issue,” he said. “And I have all the confidence that they would continue with the cleanup.”
Still, the mayor kept getting bashed by opponent Pete Dinelli.
“Mr. Mayor, all you have done is talk,” Dinelli said. “Turning it over to the Air Force isn’t going to cut it. We need to make sure that we have our congressional delegation involved, and you have to do that.”
Dinelli said that if elected, he will enforce tight water conservation policies in government buildings and city parks.
Dinelli said he is committed to environmental issues in the city, and he has the endorsement to prove it.
“I’m the only candidate that has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, and that’s because of my commitment, in my long career in public service, to the environment and to conservation,” he said. “The mayor has basically fallen asleep at the wheel … This mayor has failed on that particular issue.”
Election day is Oct. 8.
