The Feds just opened up the spigot and are flooding the zone with money for water infrastructure upgrades. Good news, right well. On today's Parts pervillion, we talk about why the tiniest water utilities in the country either don't care about this money or maybe don't even know it exists. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Parts per billion, the environmental podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host David Schultz.
New York City has the largest water utility in America in terms of customers, serving more than eight million people in the Big Apple and beyond. But for every big city utility out there, there are hundreds of smaller ones, some with fewer customers than a Manhattan high rise has residents.
These small utilities often have trouble keeping up with basic maintenance of their systems, let alone the capital costs of upgrading their infrastructure, and that's why the EPA has a huge grant and loan program designed to help water utilities pay for these upgrades. It's a hugely popular program that Congress, weather controlled by Republicans or Democrats, regularly allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to every year, and with last year's
infrastructure build now getting implemented. This water program is now flush with cash, but as we're about to learn, it takes money to be able to apply for and get this money. And for the smallest water utilities, that's money they don't have. Bobby McGill recently visited a few of these tiny water systems in rural and suburban New Mexico, and he found that this federal assistance is not trickling
down to the neediest water systems. I brought him on the show to ask him why, but first I asked him to describe what these small New Mexico communities are like. So the first place I went was this little place called Yano Camado, New Mexico, which is near Taos. Incidentally, I used to live in Taos, so I know the area pretty well, and I used to work for the newspaper there. It's an area, you know, Taos is about five thousand, six thousand people or so. It's a sort
of a resort community. But it's also an area that's heavily Hispanic and also heavily Native American. And it's a very fascinating place with a very complicated history. And this is an area Yano Kumado is it's sort of south of Taos and it's sort of on the Mason and up in the foothills of the Songer to Christa Mountains there. They've got a few hundred people who live out there.
That region is relatively economically depressed. New Mexico really hasn't seen a lot of the you know, more recent prosperity that almost every other Western state has seen. But this this community, it's very traditional and it has some water challenges. It's the infrastructure there is is difficult because they're both drought stricken and they have you know, they rely on
well water. It tapped an aquifer that's also tapped by you know, other homes that have they are able to just drill their own well and so it's created a really odd competition for water out there. Let's get into your story here, because I mean this was the lead of your story, and what a lead it was. You were talking about how Yanokmado has three wells and recently
one of them started pumping sand instead of water. Like what happened there, Well, it was just a well that was it was sort of in bad shape and it needed to be replaced. Up until recently, they had three sources of water and now they have two and it needs to be replaced. But they also have other infrastructure challenges.
They had pipes that needed to be replaced, and a number of other issues that they sort of all mount up, and they don't know if they're going to be able to tap any federal infrastructure funding, mainly because they don't really have they don't know all the details about how
to apply for it. That was the corrux of your story here, which is that you know, you would think that this federal funding that just passed in the infrastructure bill last year would be a godsend to communities like Yano Kumado that have all these infrastructure problems in a very very small tax base. But your story, as it pointed out, show that no, this is not a godsend. This is actually not really helpful at all. Can you
explain why that is it's so counterintuitive. Well, it's complicated because to some communities who are tapped into this, it could be a godsend. But the truth is that so this money is being distributed through the EPA's state revolving funds and these are these are big, you know, big pools of money that are used to give water utilities low very very low interest loans well, not just that, but also grants, and a good portion of this is
directed specifically to underserved communities. But the underserved communities are the ones least likely to be aware of this money and least likely to be prepared to apply for it. And in many cases you have to have shovel ready projects.
And you know, these these small communities, and we're talking about thousands of water systems nationwide and just you know, more than four hundred in New Mexico alone, they don't have the resources to uh, they don't have the technical expertise, and a lot of these are a lot of these small systems are run by volunteers, you know, so so things are complicated. They need technical assistance, some of which
is available. But you know, part of the problem here is that the every state is different in how the money is distributed. So Congress gives this money to the states through the EPA, and every state gets a different amount of money based on a complicated mesh formula, and then it's up to each state to decide how to distribute that and set up the program to allow these
small water systems to apply. Now, this is an existing program, it's been around for decades, but it's being flooded with money, which means that you know, the states really have to sort of ramp up existing you know, staffing and whatnot and technical assistance programs. And every one of those states is different in how it provides assistance for these communities. And so in New Mexico, as of early April, they
hadn't really finished setting this up yet. They said that they planned to reach out to a lot of these communities. But there are a lot of communities that have a lot of dilapidated water systems that need a lot of help. And you know, in many cases, when I called up these water systems, I was the first one to tell them about some of this money was available to that. Wow,
that's amazing. Is this something that's on the EPA's radar that these really really tiny water systems don't even have the resources to be able to apply for the funding, let alone use the funding. EPA is totally aware of this, And there was a infrastructure conference in Washington, DC towards the end of April, and you know, one of their officials said, yeah, we're totally aware that people don't know about this. It's one of the biggest challenges we have.
And so they're providing, you know, they've got a pot of money for technical assistance, but it's it's limited. And again, you know, this is a state, you know, de facto state run federal programs and uh, you know, so the EPA only has so much power to reach out to these communities. Well, let's contrast Yano Kumado with another town
that you visited called Carneel. This is a town that's also pretty small, but it also happens to be geographically pretty close to a very large town, which is Albuquerque. Tell me about what's going on in Carnewell and how it's proximity to Albuquerque is making it, you know, much easier to get these funds. So Carnewell is a really unique place. I mean it's literally on the edge of Albuquerque, Like you drive a mile to the to the west
and you're in the suburbs. But this is, uh, this is a place you know that's sort of bisected by Interstate forty and you know, the pavement runs out in some of these neighborhoods. It's you know, everything is you know, a lot of these homes are really old adobe homes that that are sort of in the foothills of the
are Actually they're sort of in the Sandia Mountains. They did not have a community water system until recently, and so basically all the all the homes there had their own wells, but the wells because of the drought, the wells are running dry and they needed to sort of
pool their resources in a community water system. Well, they didn't have the resources to create the system, and so about a decade ago, they you know, since they're on the edge of Albuquerque, they were able to create a water system of their own by teaming up with the Albuquerque Bernolio County Water Utilities Authority, which essentially became their
fiscal agent. They were able to provide technical expertise that a lot of these other tiny water systems throughout the state and around the country don't have the water system there. It's like, hey, you know, we're a success story because we're able to team up with Albuquerque, and even though we're small and we're low income, it's proximity to a big city that's helped us out. You spoke with a water official there in Carnwell who talked about this very idea.
His name was Moisis Gonzalez. Let's hear from him. We are applying for that funding. It's very competitive given the needs of rural New Mexico as the rural needs of all of the whole United States. And the thing is is the infrastructure needs of that in rural communities outweigh the kind of funding that's out there in terms of infrastructure. It's a major challenge. And because we're partnered with one of the bigger water authorities in the state, that helps
us out. I feel more sorry for the for the water associations that are in rural communities in New Mexico. They're made up like us volunteer boards. But we're lucky. I guess we're We're potentially a successful story because we partner with the city of the aublictricy, and that's a big,
big difference. So I want to finish off by talking about a concept that you mentioned your story called regionalization, and it plays into what Moists was just talking about, the idea that small water systems would either team up with each other and pull their resources and serve a larger regional area or in Carnwell's case, a small water system would team up with a much larger one nearby. It seems like this would be a solution to a lot of these problems, especially the ones in Yano Kamado.
But it's very controversial. Can you just talk about why it's controversial and why this doesn't really work for everyone? Well, it's controversial for a lot of reasons, but a lot of people, a lot of I mean, this is something that this stay in Mexico is really advocating for it because they know that a lot of these smaller systems just don't have the resources. They don't have the water.
But it's it's expensive because you know, these water systems have to literally connect, they have to build pipes that pool their water resources. But you know, these small water systems also like to have control over their own their own systems and uh and they all have different financial uh state, they're all in a different financial state, and they all have different interests, and you know, there's there's there's all kinds of small town politics that that play
into this. But you know, Yano Camado is an interesting case and this was not in the story, but the system administrator there very much wants to regionalize, but his neighboring systems very much do not. And they're all friends, right, but you know they there's there's like there's there's trust issues,
and there's again small town politics play into this. But at the end of the day, like because they don't have the resources of the staffing, they don't know a lot of these systems don't even know who's gonna their their administrators don't even know who's going to succeed them because they don't have a lot of interest there. But they still have you know, they still have to provide clean water, and they still have the same Drinking Water Act and other water laws to UH to comply with.
So regionalization is the the states use. Regionalization is the best way to do it. But I should we should point I mean, you know, people might be thinking, oh, this is just a matter of pride that you know, these local officials just want to hang you know, cling on to the to the power they have over their water systems. But it's it's not. It might be partly that,
but it's not just that. If you think back to Carneel, you know they're pretty reliant on Albuquerque for their water which means that if Albuquerque wants to, you know, change the terms of their deal, they don't really have much leverage. I mean, this is the local officials giving up a lot of their power, giving up a lot of their sovereignty for how they run their own communities. Yeah, that's right.
And you know this is true in in these more far flowing places as well, because I mean, you know, again, some of these systems are extraordinarily remote, and you know, they might have to connect with systems that are really far away with different interests, different you know, different environmental factors. They one area might have more water than the other, and you know, and and again in the financial situation for each of these systems, they that has to be
reconciled when they when they regionalize. So things are really complicated. And but I think probably ultimately there's going to be a lot more of that going on, because I think we're going to find that a lot of these systems just don't have a choice in the end. All right, Well, that was Bobby McGill speaking to us about his recent trip to New Mexico. Bobby, thank you so much for talking. Yeah, you bet, and that'll do it for today's episode of
Parts Pervilion. If you want more environmental news, check us out on Twitter. We use the handle at environment just that at environment, I'm at David B. Schultz. That's be as in New Mexico's very own better call Saul. What a great show. Definitely check it out if you haven't already. Today's episode of Parts for Billion was produced by myself, David Schultz. Parts for Billion was created by Jessica Coombs and Rachel Dagle and is edited by Zach Sherwood and
Chuck McCutcheon, and our executive producer is Josh Block. Thanks everyone for listening. The killers of Bertaca Serras had every reason to believe they'd get away with murder. Her work as an environmental activist won her the admiration of celebrities in California, politicians in Washington, and the indigenous communities she worked alongside in Honduras. It also earned her powerful enemies. On a new podcast from Bloomberg Green, Blood River follows
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