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Water Tank Erected Soon Along Loma Larga Ditch |
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Written by Jeff Radford
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Monday, 26 May 2008 |
Erection of a 36-foot high water storage tank between Loma Larga and
the Corrales Main Canal north of West Ella Drive should begin soon.
The Village Council approved a contract with D&R Tank Company at
its April 8 meeting to install the tank for the Corrales Fire
Department. The firm will install another of similar size at the main
fire station on Corrales Road.
Councillors nearly balked at the cost, $437,244, which was considerably
more than expected. Village Administrator Nora Scherzinger explained
that the cost of steel has risen sharply since original pricing was
done. She said the fire chief, Anthony Martinez, has assured her the
tanks are necessary.
“Our fire chief has told us he needs six tanks, and this will bring us up to four.”
Mayor Phil Gasteyer said the price squeeze resulted from “the price of
steel which has skyrocketed because the American dollar is so low on
the world market that the price of Belgian steel, Brazilian steel and
Japanese steel is a helluva lot more expensive.”
The tank that will go up along the west side of the Main Canal ditch
bank south of Camino Arco Iris and north of West Ella Drive is being
located on Village-owned land acquired as an unusable remnant when a
tract west of the canal was subdivided decades ago. Zoning of the
remnant was changed to M (municipal) a year ago to accommodate the
water tank. Only minor complaints were voiced from the public when the
Village announced its plans for the parcel and proceeded to re-zone it.
The tank will be 20 feet in diameter and 36 feet tall.
The tank there and the one proposed for the main fire station will be
the second and third installed in recent years. The first water tank
behind the Village Office complex, at the corner of Corrales Road and
East La Entrada, was purchased second hand and hauled here from the
North Valley in the late 1980s.
The Village didn’t get a second tank until one was installed at the
fire department’s new substation in the Far Northwest Sector two years
ago.
Another large water tank for fire suppression is being installed at Corrales Elementary School.
At a work-study session February 19, 2007, the mayor and council
met with Fire Chief Martinez to sort through possible sites to erect
water towers that could supply fire fighting efforts.
Corrales had legislative appropriations for three or four more towers,
after erection of the second one behind the new substation. Scherzinger
said she wanted to move ahead with siting and installing the towers,
and prodded councillors for their suggestions as to where they should
go.
She distributed a list of questions to spark discussion. They included:
• “How many wells and tanks should we have village wide?”
• “Where should they be located, existing and future?”
• “Will we need to acquire land? Where?”
• “What size should the tanks be at which locations? (water pressure per gallons) needed.”
• “What types of tanks should we build? Above ground, below ground, partial, hydrants.”
• “How many stations will we need? Currently we have a main and substation 1.”
• “What vehicles and equipment do we have and will we need in the future? tankers, rescue, brush truck.”
• “Available water sources - water rights? Rio Rancho?”
• “Insurance ramifications?”
Scherzinger also presented a map showing all municipally-owned land, on
the assumption that it would be cheaper to locate wells and tanks on
land already owned by the Village.
The council’s work-study session was intended to help Village officials
sort through options for improving fire protection in the absence of
fire hydrants.
So far, the fire department has two water towers from which it can quickly load pumper trucks to rush to fire scenes.
Village officials succeeded in securing funds for other wells and
water towers from the State Legislature over the last few years.
Approximately $375,000 was appropriated during the 2005 and 2006
sessions of the State Legislature for these new fire suppression
wells and water tanks which were then estimated to cost $160,000 each,
not counting any land acquisitions.
The fire chief has worked on locating more water towers around Corrales
for nearly two years. He has sought advice from the State Fire
Marshall’s Office to determine the Village’s best options.
He explained one of the most important factors in selecting sites for
the new wells and tanks would be to match areas of greatest potential
need to locations where the Village already owns land to put the wells
and tanks.
Martinez drew three circles with half-mile radii on a map of
Corrales showing the coverage that is available now that the tower at
the new sub-station is operational. The map showed gaps
(territory not within a half-mile of either the substation, the tank at
the Village Office Complex or the Pueblo los Cerros storage tank) in
the central-west portion of Corrales, the extreme southeastern part
(although fire hydrants exist in the Corrales neighborhood behind Las
Tiendas de Corrales Center) and the northerly east portion of Corrales.
In Martinez’s analysis explained to Corrales Comment in summer 2006,
it’s not simply a matter of trying to put a water supply within a
half-mile of every home, but putting it near the areas of greatest
need, such as in the commercial district.
In that perspective, it seemed to make sense to put at least one of the
next three or four tanks at the current fire station across from Rancho
de Corrales. Right now, fire trucks and tankers have to go down to
the tank at the Village Office Complex to load up with water.
The Village now has three such tanker trucks that can pull underneath
the tank’s down-spout to take on water very rapidly by gravity
flow.
In typical operation during a blaze here, one tanker is at the fire
scene, one is filling up at the water tank at the Village Office
complex, and one is en route from the tank to the fire scene.
But it takes a lot of water to fight some fires, particularly now that
so many mansion-sized homes are being built here. In some blazes, the
30,000-gallon tank at the Village Office Complex has been drained
completely.
If Chief Martinez can shorten the delivery distance between water tanks
and the fire scene, not only does the fire get extinguished quicker,
but fire insurance rates also drop significantly.
In August 2006, Martinez met with officials from the State Fire Marshall’s Office to begin mapping out how to do that.
Initially, they determined that the greatest potential needs for
fire-fighting water are at Corrales Elementary School, Sandia View
Academy and Academy Furniture.
“All of those would require an awful lot of water if they caught fire,”
Martinez suggested. “For us to meet the needs for a fire at Academy
Furniture, for example, it would take greater than 1,000 gallons a
minute.
“I think we can show that we can deliver close to 200 gallons per minute, but it’s still hard to do that.”
He said the insurance rate-setting Insurance Service Office looks for a
fire department’s ability to deliver 250 gallons a minute for up to two
hours.
“If we could prove that, it would bring down fire insurance rates,” he said.
Without fire hydrants, the only way to make such an improvement is to
station water sources closer to areas where they are most needed.
“We’re working with the Planning and Zoning Office now to see if we can
identify areas where the Village owns property in areas from
which it would be convenient to shuttle water to fire scenes,” he added.
One such site where the Village owns land is at the top of Angel Road.
That parcel was identified years ago as a possible location for a
municipal well and water tank. It also has the advantage of gravity
delivery to one or more possible hydrant locations below.
Similarly, he has looked at installing one of the three or four new
well and tanks in the vicinity of Pueblo los Cerros, so that they Fire
Department would no longer have to rely on the private well there.
Martinez is well aware that some homeowners may fight having a tall,
imposing water tower near their homes. But he said options exist that
could minimize the profile of such tanks.
The fire chief said he’s open to any ideas, including a combination of
water supply options such as wells and tanks in some locations, and
hydrants along some roads leading down from wells and tanks on the
escarpment. |
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