EDGEWOOD CORE

I am concerned about the apparent neglect from Town Hall. This is part of an email I wrote the Governing Body.

My friend wrecked his car. He was drinking and lost control. Finally, in desperation, he threw himself onto the floorboard and went where his SUV took him. In this case, since he was only going at about 40 MPH in an Espanola neighborhood, it was through a fence, over some greenery and into the side of a house. I can’t help but think of my friend when I see what is happening to Edgewood.

Driven by corruption, weighed down by arrogance, and rendered useless by incompetence, the acting Mayor, John Abrams quickly overdrove his headlights. He is ducking and covering; the fate of the town is now in the hands of fortune. If the small operational details are being ignored, you can be certain that the big items are not being served.

The Town offices are closed to the public. If you access the town website to contact the Town, you will be misdirected. Although it has been eight months since the former Mayor was removed from office for malfeasance, his photo and email are still being displayed as contact information. This is a town office that doesn’t care, not even a little.

Another example:

Our biggest investment, expense, and liability is the wastewater plant. It is also thought to be the key to our commercial growth and prosperity by the people who created it.

The plant has been effectively abandoned. Except for engineering contracts given to a former Councilor which, so far, have benefitted only that Councilor, it appears the administration has thrown themselves onto the metaphorical floorboard.

We know the plant is not working properly and we know some steps to take to fix it. The administration simply can’t get it done. Every year they use the urgent needs of the plant to ask for money to make repairs. Every year they misappropriate the money to the former Mayor’s benefit, or like last year, have to return it because they didn’t get around to using it. The waste process is very simple. Solids and pathogens are removed from the raw waste by filters and the filtered water is directed into a pond for evaporation. When the pond gets too full, the excess water is pumped onto the ground next to the pond.

Sharp objects tear holes in the filters. The raw waste that gets through is neutralized by bleach. This creates other problems, but it meets the environmental requirements for killing bad viruses and bacteria.

When I sent John Abrams photos and informed him that the containment pond was too full, he refused to act, resulting in an overtopping of the pond, and a notice of violation from the New Mexico Environmental Department for failing to maintain adequate freeboard.

This is the lowest level of maintenance possible. I can only imagine what else is being neglected. I literally have to speculate because John Abrams refuses to allow the wastewater department to report to the Council and the Public although all of the other departments do so every month. After the administration was caught falsifying chemical analysis reports to the Council, they decided not to report at all. They promised NMED they would publish analysis reports but so far this year they have refused – not neglected – refused to do so. Information provided to the Council is typically 4 1/2 months out of date.

I observed the waste containment pond Saturday, June 26, 2021 and noticed that the pond apparently had overtopped again at some point between March and June. This time it was more serious. There is video evidence that wastewater ran out on the North, West, and East sides of the pond. The overflow caused some minor erosion of the berm.

Since normal freeboard maintenance would require flipping a switch to turn on a pump anytime in the last couple of months, I think we can deduce that the staff has run completely out of damns to give.

You might wonder, what difference does it make since the water is just going to be dumped on the ground anyway?

Aside from raising a whole array of red flags, if the containment pond were to fail from overfilling, it would release as much as 9 million gallons of wastewater into Mr Parker’s land and into Bachelor draw, interrupt operation of the facility, and cost a great deal of money in emergency repair.

I am shocked that the town would so casually allow this to happen after being cited so recently for the very same thing. I reported the first incident of violating the freeboard requirement to the town. I took videos of the before-and-after of the overflow I predicted when the Town failed to act. This incident took me by surprise. By good fortune I do have before-and-after high resolution video evidence of the second spill.

The town administration and senior staff are failing us. The wastewater treatment plant is just one of many problems they are ignoring or dragging their feet on. We also don’t have adequate roads maintenance, no new paved roads or trails in five years, no regular recreation programs, and there are many, many more problems. Edgewood deserves better. We certainly deserve people in charge who care.