Dec. 10—A planned 130-mile pipeline intended to tap water from Ute Reservoir for users in Clovis and other communities is the target of a new lawsuit intended to halt a key phase of the project.
The decades-long project faces pushback from Quay County residents who allege that planned construction would “tear up portions of Ute Lake shoreline” and damage tourism and the economy of the nearby Village of Logan.
The lawsuit also alleges that costs of the pipeline have ballooned to more than $1 billion, of which only a quarter of the money has been secured.
The suit asks a judge to bar the utility authority from starting construction in Quay County until the project is designed and funding is secured to complete the pipeline.
The lawsuit was filed last week in 10th Judicial District Court on behalf of Quay County, the Village of Logan, and 17 property owners in the path of the planned pipeline. It names as a defendant the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority, which oversees the project.
Clovis Mayor Mike Morris responded that construction of the pipeline is a matter of survival for communities in eastern New Mexico. Currently, the dwindling supply in the Ogallala Aquifer is the sole source of municipal and agricultural water in the region, he said.
“We’re doing it because we are literally running out of water,” Morris said recently in a phone interview. “We have a sole source of water and it’s finite, and it’s going away. The pipeline gives us a second source and its a renewable source of water for our community. We must have this, and it’s why we’ve hung in for so many years — so many decades.”
The water utility authority plans to spend $84 million to build a 14-mile segment of the pipeline from Ute Lake beginning in 2025, the suit said. The project, called Raw Water 1A, would cause “extensive construction and damage” to roads in Logan and Quay County, the suit contends. The project also required the utility to exercise eminent domain for 17 Quay County property owners.
The suit seeks injunctive relief that would prevent the utility from taking steps to build the pipeline or pursue eminent domain against property owners “until it has funding to complete the entire project.”
The water utility “has only a small portion of the money needed to complete the project and may never get the funding to do so,” the suit contends.
Warren Frost, a Logan attorney who filed the lawsuit, argues that the utility will need an additional $500 million to design and build the project.
“All we’re asking is, don’t come and tear up our community until you’ve got the money to finish the pipeline,” Frost said. “Don’t start on our end of the pipeline not knowing if you’re ever going to be able to complete it.”
The Ute Reservoir Water Project project is intended to take water from Ute Reservoir near Logan, and pump it up the Caprock to a treatment plant. The pipeline is intended provide water to Cannon Air Force Base, Clovis, Portales, Elida, Texico and unincorporated areas of Curry and Roosevelt counties.
The suit also contends that the cost of the plant that would be treating water from Ute Lake has increased from an estimated $203 million in 2022 to more than $400 million in June 2023, in part because of deteriorating water quality in Ute Lake.
Morris said the communities have a sound legal right to the water dating to 1950, when New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma signed the Canadian River Compact allowing New Mexico to store up to 22,000 acre-feet of the Canadian River, which feeds Ute Lake.
The compact allocated 16,415 acre-feet per year to members of the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority, of which Clovis is entitled to 12,582 acre-feet, Morris said. Ute Reservoir was built in the early 1960s to store that water, he said.
“Our leaders back then knew we were going to need water for water security in eastern New Mexico,” he said. “The reservoir exists today because of that.”
The utility will obtain funding for the pipeline as construction continues, Morris said. The project got a boost from the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021, he said.
The Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority obtained $177.4 million in federal funding in 2022 from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to help pay for the project. Cost sharing for the project is set at 75% federal, 15% state and 10% local.
“That’s how a project this size works,” Morris said. “They don’t advance us all the money at once.”
The injection of new federal money in 2022 advanced the project said Morris.
“We ramped up design, easement acquisition, construction,” he said. “We engaged in all phases of the project in 2022. It’s happening because now the money has been appropriated and it’s coming.” The utility so far has completed about 70 miles of pipeline, he said.
Morris acknowledged that costs of the project have increased over time. “Construction of anything is more expensive now than it was even just a few years ago.”