Logan official: Ute pipeline 'damaging our economy'

CLOVIS — Thursday’s water authority meeting got off to a contentious start when a village of Logan administrator accused members of damaging Logan’s economy in favor of others.

“I’m simply going to leave you with one small request,” Logan village administrator Rodney Paris told the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority. “Don’t do any construction (in Logan) until you figure out how much it’s going to take, and you have full funding to build your treatment plant before you start tearing up everything there, damaging our economy to build your own.”

Paris, accompanied by Logan Mayor Barry Bass, said he thinks the authority “gave an impression to the public that y’all are fully funded, which we know is not true.”

Furthermore, he said “the reason I bring this up is because … we really don’t think that the public knows.”

Quay County residents long have been critical of the Ute Water Project, which is building a water pipeline from the lake at Logan to Clovis, Portales, Cannon Air Force Base and other member communities to the south.

Logan-area residents fear the project will drain the lake, while others contend low lake levels will be rare due to restrictions by the state.

“Logan has been partners with Clovis, Curry County and everybody else for years, and we’re asking for you to be our partners,” Paris told the authority. “When Cannon Air Force Base was going to close, Logan had your backs. So, let’s all be good neighbors.”

In response, Clovis Mayor Mike Morris said “we are neighbors through this all and to the end, and I’m committed to being a good neighbor.

“I am fighting the urge to take offense to the idea that we haven’t shared information because we have public meetings open to the public all the time. I go to great lengths to educate the public, share with them what we’re doing, answer hard questions,” Morris said.

What’s more, Morris said he and the authority go to great lengths to secure funding for the project.

“We were in (Washington) D.C. just at the end of last month and met with all of the partners. There’s full commitment to finishing the project, and that (information is) readily available everywhere, certainly everywhere I go, because I talk about this all the time,” Morris said.

This past April, Paris told ABC 7 news: “The concern we have for the future is we think it’s going to destroy our lake, which is going to impact our community in hundreds of negative ways.”

According to that same article, “the lake is a major source of income for the village of Logan bringing in around 400,000 visitors a year; they believe a loss of water will have a negative economic impact.”

Morris encouraged Paris to stay until the end of the meeting. Paris responded he couldn’t because of other obligations.

Morris replied by saying, “That’s some of the problem, because you share and you act as though we’ve not been open with the public, but we discuss all of these things; our timeline for funding, our timeline for construction, all of those things in our monthly board meetings, I update the public … We’ve had public meetings about this. The public has the information.”

Morris told Paris to “please come closer to the information on a more consistent basis, and I think it’s a shame if you missed the reports towards this meeting.”

Paris said he’d be more involved and would do his best to stay until the end. But before the meeting was adjourned, he slipped out of the room.

“Everyone of us in this room works for the public; whether we want to admit that or not, we do,” Paris said. “So, if we’re turning around and we’re going to start tearing all this up as we move out, you’re devastating Logan, you’re devastating Quay County. For what gain? Because it’s going to be more convenient for a cultural survey. That’s troubling to me.”

The debate has resulted in lawsuits from Quay County that failed to halt construction. The two sides cannot even agree on what to call the body of water – Logan and Quay County officials call it Ute Lake, while Clovis-area officials call it Ute Reservoir, pointing out it was created decades ago with the intention of supplying water to all of eastern New Mexico.

The project, scheduled for completion around 2031 with a price tag estimated at more than $1 billion, is almost entirely funded or has funding promised from federal, state and local governments.

The only unfunded component is a water treatment facility planned for Curry County that will cost “hundreds of millions,” Morris said, but officials are confident it will be funded by the multiple public entities that have already invested.