Westside Albuquerque water treatment plant one step closer to reality - KRQE News 13

Westside Albuquerque water treatment plant one step closer to reality

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.(KRQE) – It’s opening the door to saving lots of fresh water on the Westside with water reuse. It includes a big plan for a treatment plant near the river—and it won’t come cheap.

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“This plant will take, will take wastewater and convert it into non-potable water that’s suitable for use as irrigation water on parks, golf courses, open spaces, things like that,” said David Morris, public affairs manager with the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA).

The four-acre lot near Coors Boulevard and Montaño Road isn’t much to look at right now, and aside from a sign on the side, you wouldn’t know the site is an important piece of the ABCWUA’s plan to make sure a precious resource is safeguarded in the future.

“The Water Authority’s 100-year plan calls for greater and greater reliance on reuse—reclaimed water that can be essentially used again and every time we use it again, that’s drinking water that doesn’t get used for things like irrigation,” Morris said.

While the plan has been in the works for well over a decade, the water authority is just beginning the project’s next—costly—phase. Morris says they asked the state legislature for $30 million this session to help kickstart the design phase. “I believe we’ve gotten $120,000 from this legislature. It’s pending the governor’s approval of course,” Morris said, “It’s a small fraction of what ultimately we’ll need but we nevertheless appreciate the help and support from the state.”

Morris said they will look for other ways to fund the project: “That obviously is a lot of money and we’re going to turn over every stone we can to find what we can. The legislature was good enough to help us with a little bit that we can use toward the design process, but eventually, we’ll probably end up borrowing the money through bond sales to do this as part of our capital improvement project.”

The whole project is estimated to cost around $300 million. “A lot of the growth that’s happening in our community is happening on the West Side. We’re expanding our drinking water capacity on this side and therefore we need to expand our wastewater capacity on this side of the river,” Morris says, “We’re moving closer and closer to making that a reality.”

The water authority says the project shouldn’t bring any future rate increases.