As workers along Corrales Road connect the first and second stages of the sewer line near the intersection at Meadowlark Lane, the third and final stage will get under way from Cabezon headed south.

The last and most difficult stretch will run from the Corrales Road-Cabezon intersection to an existing sewage pumping station near Pep Boys on North Coors. Crews will have to tease their way under the Alameda-Coors intersection where buried electrical cables and other utility lines present unseen drilling hazards.

After that connection is made to the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority’s (ABCWUA) sewage pumping station, expected next month, more unknowns will be confronted as trenches will be dug from the sewer main along Corrales Road to adjacent property owners’ septic tanks.

Hook-ups to the sewer line for residents and businesses between Wagner Lane and Cabezon Road are anticipated early next year, according to Village Administrator John Avila.

But first, Village officials must approve an ordinance that spells out which landowners must connect and begin paying for sewer service, in what time frame, and at what cost. The ordinance, which had not been drafted as of June 15, is expected to include a method to  obtain an easement on each property to be served by the municipal waste water collection system. Monthly service fees must be set along with requirements such as electrical power to the pump to be installed near each septic tank to deliver waste water out to the sewer main.

Also to be addressed is how costs to low-income homeowners can be subsidized, perhaps using funds from state environmental programs.

Mayor Phil Gasteyer said June 15 he anticipated a draft ordinance addressing some or all these factors may be ready for discussion at the July 17 Village Council meeting.

Virtually no public discussion of most of these issues has come since a water quality task force presented recommendations to the mayor and council in 2009. 

“We’re still following the road map set by Urey Lemen’s committee [recommendations from the Corrales Water Quality Advisory Committee, April 2009],” Gasteyer said last year.

“The recommendation [from the Lemen committee] is that it’s a totally Village-owned enterprise, and that you [the homeowner or business owner] have an easement up to your septic tank” along which the Village’s contractor would install a small pipe to take liquid sewage out the sewer line along Corrales Road.

(See Corrales Comment Vol.XXVII, No.6, May 9, 2009 “Decision May 12 on Corrales Sewer Line”)

“We’ll eventually have to, by ordinance or resolution, have a decision point on connecting from the home to the sewer line. And also, who has to connect. The committee’s recommendation was that if you’re  a property owner within 200 feet of Corrales Road in the commercial core, you would be required to connect —although it has an exemption for ‘lots meeting current N.M. Environment Department standards until there is a property transfer, system failure or 10 years, whichever occurs first.’”

Two years ago, after the Lemen committee submitted its recommendations, the mayor said he was “going to advocate the recommendations from this committee.” Those included:

• a hook-up fee imposed by the Village of $500, assuming the property owner agreed to connect within 90 days of the sewer line being completed;

• a modest, affordable monthly service fee;

• an easement through each property served by the sewer main along which a small-diameter pipe would carry waste water from a septic tank out to Corrales Road; and

• a requirement that those septic tanks (which would retain solid wastes) be pumped out on a specified periodic basis.

“In the [Lemen] report, they said the committee recommends an ordinance requiring septic tanks or advanced treatment systems to be pumped a minimum of every three years and that all homeowners be required to submit documentation of their septic permits, and that we would attempt to enforce the requirement for pumping on a three-year cycle,” Gasteyer recalled.

Three years ago, Gasteyer said he hoped funding for the sewer project would allow the Village do allocate $300,00-400,000 to subsidize hook-up costs for property owners on fixed incomes who might not be able to afford them. That might include upgrades in electrical service at homes not wired adequately to supply power for pumps to send waste water out to the road.

That prospect for financial assistance dimmed when the Village was not allowed to connect its proposed sewer line into the sewage lift station just south of Cabezon Road as designed.

“The unexpected development in the middle of May, 2009 was that ABCWUA decided that they couldn’t take the maximum flow that was projected if we made every [septic tank] connection in higher density neighborhoods on either side of Corrales Road as well as the Corrales Road area. The engineers even assumed a certain number of connections between Meadowlark and Calle Cuervo.

“That’s when they announced, ‘Well, if you’re going to be 195,000 gallons per day rather than 60 or 70,000 gallons per day, why, then there’s no way, because we’re already over-capacity at the Calle Cuervo lift station and the sewer pipe down to the larger lift station at Alameda.’”

Although Village officials had been assured years ago the Calle Cuervo lift station would be adequate for Corrales’ sewage, the mayor explained, that was before the Flying Star shopping center added more volume and before Corrales’ input was upped from 60,000 gallons per day to nearly 200,000.

The mayor said the utility authority has claimed it would be too expensive to  double the size of the Calle Cuervo lift station because a bigger sewer line from it to the Alameda-Coors lift station would also have to be installed.

Village officials were finally successful in obtaining additional funding to extend the sewer main past the Cabezon sewage pumping station and on to beyond the Coors-Alameda intersection to a lift station with more capacity.

In an interview with Corrales Comment in 2010, the mayor was asked whether he was still convinced it was the best idea to install a liquids-only sewer line rather than a conventional sewer that takes sewage solids as well as waste water.

Gasteyer replied: “Well, it was what we could afford when we could afford it, I guess. This was driven by having the first version peer-reviewed by another firm, and very close oversight from Dr. Richard Rose [then N.M. Environment Department bureau chief for waste water system construction].”

Village officials followed the advice from the contracted engineering firm Souder, Miller and Associates, approved by Rose, that the best choice with funds available would be to install the liquids-only sewer line. That followed an earlier recommendation from the Village’s usual engineering firm, The Larkin Group, which advocated a conventional sewer pipe sending sewage from Corrales’ commercial district to Albuquerque for treatment and disposal.

The 2006 Larken document assumed the rest of the village would continue to have private septic systems or multi-user advanced treatment units.

Larken’s sewer engineering report includes the following summary of the proposal. “We have prepared the following scenario as a combination of systems for the Village.

“Install a pipe in Corrales Road, sized for ultimate Village load (700,000 gallons per day- approximately 18-inch diameter pipe) between Wagner [Lane] and Calle Cuervo [south of Cabezon], connected to the N.M. Utilities (NMU, now owned and operated by ABCWUA) system pump station. 

“Provide service connections for all properties that have legal frontage on Corrales Road in this area. 

“Create a ‘Special Assessment District’ (SAD) that encompasses all of these properties, without any costs being shared by the remainder of the village [residents]. 

“Apply the ‘Hook-up’ ordinance as approved by N.M. Environment Department (NMED) and the Village Council.

“Continue the well-testing program in order to determine the condition of groundwater throughout the village, and relative changes that may be occurring. 

“Seek assistance from NMED in providing additional testing capability and evaluation. Continue to solicit additional subscribers to the program, especially in ‘high-risk’ areas (Priestly- Coroval, Mockingbird, Mamma, N.Felice Perea, etc.)

“Maintain a dialog with the NMED regarding their regulations for on-site system inspection in order to make certain that the remaining systems in the Village are operating satisfactorily. 

“This scenario provides for collection and treatment of sewage in the most congested area of the village, the continued evaluation of groundwater quality, and the NMED oversight and enforcement of standards for existing on-site septic systems.”

The report, developed primarily by Village Engineer Steve Grollman, provided cost estimates based in part on what the City of Albuquerque (actually the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, ABCWUA) would charge as monthly fees to properties served by the sewer line. For residences, the monthly fees are estimated at $18, after a one-time hook-up fee of $1,500. 

On top of that, residents would have to pay to run a sewer line from their home (or existing septic tank) out to the road; that was estimated at $5,000, assuming a distance of 200 feet at $25 a foot.

For commercial users, the fees were estimated higher by Grollman in 2006: a one-time hook-up fee of $2,600, $35 a month in user fees and the same $5,000 to run a line from the business out to the road.

Even higher costs would be paid by restaurants and other larger volume users. Those were estimated at $400 a month in user fees, plus a hook-up fee of $9,100.

All of those recommendations were superceded by a proposal from a different engineering firm, Souder, Miller and Associates, which convinced the Village Council to go for a liquids-only pressurized sewer system.

In presenting its case for the first alternative, The Larkin Group had noted public input on the topic as follows.  “On June 29, 2006 the Village Council held a public meeting in order to obtain input and comments on the documents prepared at that time (May 2005 Preliminary Engineering Report and an October 2005 Supplementary Engineering Report). A separate volume of the meeting transcript and subsequent written comments received has been prepared. There were significant concerns in the public input and other related issues which can be addressed at this time, and have been considered in the development of a combination of systems.”

Those reports can be reviewed at the Corrales Library or the Village Office. 

Similar engineering reports for the liquids-only sewer line recommended by Souder, Miller and Associates are also available for review at those locations.