ADMINISTRATOR’S REPORT

DECEMBER 2009

I apologize for the typo in the November report. Although the installation of the waterline line was hard work, it wasn’t that difficult and the work went pretty smoothly. A few last minute corrections were made in November. The bill for that work and the requested change orders is awaiting settlement before we submit it to the NM Environment Department for direct payment. We still haven’t been reimbursed for the payment we made in October, but we expect it sometime next week. We met the November deadline for insuring that we keep our capital outlay monies, but I haven’t heard from DFA or the Environment Department officially. I have also not heard anything to make me believe that we won’t get the money.

The new replacement building at the plant has been given a certificate of occupancy and only a few minor punch list items remain. We have already started storing things inside the building. The centrifuge is in place, but the staff is busy attaching it to a concrete base to limit vibration. We were going to put in a transformer to switch the electrical power, but we now think we’ll just run another line to the centrifuge to get it up and running. We’ll just miss the Thanksgiving deadline, but the electrical engineer is looking at it as I write this. He’ll let us know what will work.

After last month’s meeting, I attended a meeting with the Forest Service on the Collaborative Forest Restoration Project. They seemed favorably inclined, so we’ll go forward with the stakeholders meeting on December 8, 2:00 pm at the Columbine. All are welcome to attend. You may have noticed that we have to renew our permit for the sludge disposal on the West Mesa. I had not been there before, so when a neighbor wanted to see what we were doing, I went there with Ray and met the neighbor. Both the neighbor and I were impressed. It will take some more work to get something besides goat heads to grow, however. The neighbor who farms out there was disking the dried sludge into the soil while we were there. We are hoping that with the new centrifuge and a dryer, we will be able to make Type A sludge that can be used as a soil additive anywhere.

I also attended a meeting at the Bureau of Reclamation in Albuquerque concerning the San Juan Chama project. It was the first one attended by anyone from the Village in a few years. They have sufficient funds in this year’s operating budget to make the changes that the Army Corps of Engineers wants as a result of the failure of the SCADA system, which allowed silt to run downstream when a gate on the Oso diversion dam did not close. They will however, charge the contractors for it in the next federal fiscal year. My two main objections to the planned changes were that the contractors did not get an opportunity to negotiate with the Corps and many of the changes were the type of changes that we should have been doing with long range planning. Although the immediate costs will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000.00, our share will be less than $2,000.00. For more information, please give me a call.

The spring site and well protection ordinance will be presented in January to the P&Z Commission.

Happy Holidays everyone.