At last, property owners along Corrales Road who will be required to hook up to the sewer line may learn what it will cost them. Mayor Phil Gasteyer has said he intended to propose an ordinance to set monthly service fees, hook-up charges and mandatory septic tank pumping at the Village Council’s July 17 meeting.

No preliminary draft of his proposal was available at press time.

As described several times over the past three years, the liquids-only municipal sewer system would be owned and operated by the Village which would then be charged a wholesale rate for dumping Corrales waste water into the City of Albuquerque’s sewer system.

In recent weeks, crews have trenched across Corrales Road one lane at a time to install stub-outs in the sewer main for homes between Meadowlark Lane and Cabezon Road.Village Administrator John Avila said June 19 that 20 stub-outs are being installed south of Meadowlark at residents’ request. That work is expected to continue through mid-August.

Avila also explained why passing motorists have seen a change in the way the sewer pipe was installed. The crew’s technique switched from underground drilling to open trench work, he said, because “their boring machine broke down.”

But the trickiest stretch of sewer line laying lies ahead when crews work the stretch of road shoulder between Cabezon and Alameda Boulevard. Avila did not indicate whether that would be done by trenching or whether the drilling apparatus will be employed as the sewer pipe is installed under the Coors-Alameda intersection. Crews would mostly work between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Avila said July 3 he expected Corrales’ sewer line would be connected to Albuquerque’s sewer by October 5.

Once that’s completed, the Village Administrator said, work will begin connecting homes and businesses to the sewer main. He reckoned that might begin some time after the first of the year.

 Last year, Mayor Gasteyer said he thought “first flush” might occur this summer.

But the breakdown of the directional drilling machine was just one of many snafus that have plagued the sewer project. 

The first and biggest problem came when the Albuquerque, Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority refused to let Village officials discharge waste water into the sewage lift station (pumping station) just south of the Corrales Road-Cabezon intersection. Instead, partly because more property owners south of Meadowlark wanted to hook up, Corrales was told to run the sewer line all the way south near the Pep Boys shop on North Coors.

Village officials didn’t have the money to do that. Months passed with no progress on sewer installation until finally the N.M. Environment Department offered a grant-loan package to fund completion of the Village’s sewer project.

More delays set in as engineers and sewer contractors studied how to drill under the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s irrigation ditch while water flowed in it. Once that was resolved — to go ahead without waiting until the end of the irrigation season— drilling got under way.

All of Corrales probably knows what happened next. Drillers hit an unexpected drainage pipe under Corrales Road and the pavement began to slough off into the San Mateo Drain.

That accident cost about $90,000 to repair. Presumably Village officials will  not be required to pay for that. Instead, the mayor said at the June 19 council meeting, the damages will be covered by funds from the N.M. Environment Department. “There has been no representation yet that the Village of Corrales  will be responsible for any of those costs,” Gasteyer assured.

Finally the roadway was repaired and the laying of sewer pipe resumed… until the drillers hit a gas line. Delays were only temporary with that new accident, but a few weeks later, June 19, drillers hit another gas line.

That was also apparently not serious and finally the crews got going again… until the drilling machine broke down. They switched to trenching to make the  connection to the end of the first phase near the Meadowlark intersection.