After torrential monsoon rains and floods devastated Hatch and other Dona Ana County communities in 2006, an assessment of what it would cost to bring the county’s dams and stormwater facilities up to standard put the price tag at $20 billion.

That’s with a “b.”

“Doing it over 20 years was the time frame we looked at,” said Paul Dugie, director of the Dona Ana Flood Commission. “That’s a billion a year for projects we know about right now.”

He said the high priority list of projects comes to just under $600 million.

Both are vast sums, far beyond the reach of Dona Ana County, even with state assistance.

The annual budget for Dugie’s office, which is an arm of state government, is $1 million and comes from a local property tax levy.

Dugie said the problem is the agricultural dams and other structures that were built in the 1960s to protect farm lands from a 50-year storm.

“But farmers have found it more profitable to raise subdivisions than crops, so that changed the classification of the dams from low or medium hazard to high hazard,” he said. “Because they’re protecting urban areas, we have to bring them to the 100-year standard to meet urban requirements.”

There is some interest in establishing a stormwater utility like El Paso’s, he said.

Dona Ana County Commissioner Karen Perez is a civil engineer who became interested in flood control and ran for office in November 2006 after seeing the damage done in her county and in El Paso by the August floods that year.

She sees the $600 million in projects as needed to meet the county’s flood control needs, and she would like to see a stormwater utility established.

When El Paso began looking at the creation of a stormwater utility last year, Perez invited Ed Archuleta, the Public Service Board’s chief executive officer, to a meeting of the Dona Ana County Board of Commissioners for a briefing.

“I ran into a lot of resistance,” she said. “What I heard was, ‘We already have enough taxes,’ and there was not a lot of interest from the staff or from the public in implementing a stormwater fee and fixing this.

“The overwhelming reaction was our flood commission is doing all it can.”

Since then, Perez said she backed off and has been watching El Paso.

“I’m glad I did,” she said.

The initial stormwater utility rates, which were so high for nonresidential property owners, have caused a popular backlash against the stormwater utility, the PSB and City Council.

Mayor John Cook is the target of a recall petition by a business group that is also supporting a petition drive for an initiative to bring the utility under the City Council and a lawsuit challenging the legality of the utility.

Perez said she would like to get things started inexpensively with a $1 a month assessment on households that she figures would generate $1.2 million a year.

“It doesn’t even begin to address what we need, but it’s a whole lot more than we have right now,” she said.

The question is who could collect it in a county of 300,000 people that is two-thirds rural?

There is no regional utility like the PSB in
Dona Ana County, except for El Paso Electric Co.

The idea of a monthly assessment was not well received, Perez said.

“People came back and said, ‘That’s not fair. I didn’t build in an arroyo or a flood plain. Why should I have to pay?’ " she said. “But I said, ‘You do drive, you use commercial properties, churches and schools that were affected. Everyone is affected by flooding in Dona Ana County. Isn’t it worth an extra dollar a month not to have roads and highways closed?’ ”

The public reaction to that small step was more accepting.

“But that was before gas went up to $4,” she said.

Perez said she now wants to see if the New Mexico Legislature would set up a metropolitan flood authority in Dona Ana County, which legislators authorized years ago but did not enact.

“But it would have to involve the cities and the county because it’s not worth doing with just the county,” she said. “In the meantime, I hope we don’t get flooded up to our earlobes again.

“I will try to push it though the legislature, but this is not a short-term project.”

The issue is likely to come up at a joint meeting of the Las Cruces City Council and the Board of Commissioners on July 6.

David Crowder can be reached at dcrowder@epmediagroup and (915) 351-0605