Household wells likely contaminated for decades lead to costs, concerns

Mar. 2—Jose Villegas has been living in his home on Camino Torcido Loop in the La Cieneguilla Land Grant for 48 years. It's where his children grew up and where he returned every day after going out on calls as a police chaplain.

It's also where, for much of that time, he may have been drinking contaminated water.

All of Villegas' water comes from a well on his property, which, along with many of his neighbors' wells, has tested positive for unsafe levels of toxic, cancer-causing substances often called "forever chemicals."

The discovery of these perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — more commonly known as PFAS — has upended his family's lifestyle.

Now, they take their clothes to a laundromat. They go to a family member's home to shower. They buy bottled water for drinking and cooking.

The money for these expenses has come out of Villegas' pocket, along with about $2,000 for the purchase and installation of a filtration system for his well.

"I was able to do this because of my Social Security checks, but I don't have food in the refrigerator," he said.

Villegas, 65, had his blood tested recently and said the results showed he had elevated levels of PFAS.

"Am I going to die soon? I don't know," he said. "Am I to get cancer? I don't know."

Villegas is one of many people in the La Cienega and La Cieneguilla communities south of Santa Fe who are working to get answers from government officials following Santa Fe County's November announcement PFAS had been detected in several residential wells the area.

The likely source is a former New Mexico National Guard site at the Santa Fe Regional Airport, 2.8 miles from Villegas' home, where foam used in firefighter training might have contaminated the groundwater with PFAS. Long-term exposure to high levels of the chemicals, which are found in a variety of household goods — cleaning products, cookware, carpet and clothing — can cause a range of health effects.

José Varela López, another area resident, said he could lose 16 cattle and a half-dozen calves if they drank from springs contaminated with PFAS.

"The possibility may be that I need to euthanize them," Varela López said.

The future of his 50 apple trees is also uncertain because he uses the same water to irrigate the orchard, he said.

Residents say the groundwater contamination is just the latest environmental issue facing the largely Hispanic community, which lies along the Santa Fe River downstream from the city of Santa Fe's wastewater treatment plant.

Andrea La-Cruz Crawford, president of the La Cienega Valley Association, said residents have been dealing for years with tainted effluent from the aging plant. It has sent water containing high levels of E. coli — and perhaps high PFAS levels as well — into the Santa Fe River south of the city.

"It's something that's in tons of products, so it's naturally going to be in wastewater," La-Cruz Crawford said of PFAS.

When the city detected elevated levels of E. coli in the plant's effluent last year, it ceased using the water to irrigate parks and golf courses and allowed the use of potable water for this purpose, she noted. Meanwhile, effluent from the plant continued flowing down the Santa Fe River to places where people use it for agriculture, including feeding their livestock.

"Nobody offered this community clean water," she said.

Varela López shares his neighbors' concerns about pollutants floating downstream from the city's wastewater treatment plant because his cows drink from the river, too.

While it remains unclear who is responsible for addressing the contamination — a process that is likely to take years — area residents and organizations are calling on the local, state and federal governments to respond.

They voice many of the same needs: more testing to determine the scope of the contamination; a source of safe drinking water for people with contaminated wells; reimbursement for people paying for testing and filtration systems; and clear communication with residents in both English and Spanish.

Some, including Villegas, are frustrated by what they see as a lack of action.

Villegas said government agencies intended to protect residents have instead left them to fend for themselves. He also believes La Cieneguilla has not received the same response as the Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, where PFAS contamination was discovered more than five years ago. The state recently offered free blood testing to base personnel and nearby residents.

"Why aren't they doing it for the community down here?" he asked.

Santa Fe County recently received a $459,000 state grant to investigate the extent of the area's PFAS pollution, which might include additional well testing. But it's unlikely the money will be used to reimburse residents for their own private well testing or to help cover residents' costs for filtration systems.

In response to a question about whether the county has considered paying for people to test their wells, county spokeswoman Olivia Romo wrote in an email testing is "currently the responsibility of land-owners," and the scope of well testing under the state grant "has not been determined at this time."

Testing water from private wells is not an "independent objective" of the state grant, she wrote, meaning any wells the county tests will be selected to further the goal of mapping the PFAS plume.

Varela López plans to pay more than $1,000 to have his wells tested, plus whatever it costs to test springs on his property, he said. He's spending more money for higher-end tests so he can find out not only whether his water is contaminated but also the type of chemicals he's dealing with.

Mori Hensley, executive director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association, said she believes it's crucial for residents who have paid for their own testing and water filters to be compensated, and she would like to see more testing being done.

The contamination "is most certainly not caused by somebody's Teflon pan," she noted.

She later added, "It's just not good enough to leave this already disadvantaged community on their own."

La-Cruz Crawford also called for more testing.

"Are there multiple flows? Is it a plume at all? You know, we just don't know anything really, at this point," she said. "So we need somebody to provide funding and do testing."

The La Cienega Valley Association has been working with County Commissioner Camilla Bustamante and the county's new PFAS coordinator, Shelly Moeller, to create a plan for community outreach, which includes translating information on PFAS into Spanish.

Moeller also is exploring potential funding options for private well owners to test and filter their water, and she is helping the county organize a PFAS town hall this month with a range of government officials ahead of a meeting planned in April.

La-Cruz Crawford said the association wants the city to start building a new wastewater treatment plant — a project still in the planning phase — and to conduct soil and water testing throughout the community. It wants the county to extend waterlines to the community and, in the short term, provide a clean water source to residents who can't use their wells.

Stacy Timmons, associate director of hydrogeology programs for the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, said she sees the groundwater in the area as one of several "canaries in the coal mine" for the state.

"This is an indicator of some of the things to come for New Mexico's water," she said.

The hydrology of the groundwater below La Cienega and La Cieneguilla is particularly interesting because it's at the edge of the Española Basin, where deep groundwater is mixing with shallow groundwater.

"It's a really dynamic and complex region," Timmons said.

Timmons said the PFAS contamination highlights the need for more data on how the groundwater is flowing into people's private wells. In the meantime, she said the residents should receive funds to treat their water and access to a clean water supply.

Part of what makes PFAS so concerning is that it doesn't break down over time like some other contaminants do, and there's currently almost no way to do effective large-scale removal of the chemicals from the water supply.

Once it's in an aquifer, "it almost becomes house-by-house treatment that's required," she said.

Staff writers Scott Wyland and Maya Hilty contributed to this report.