Greg In The Desert

Some people in a Rio Rancho neighborhood hit by a water main break on Sunday are saying that the city isn’t doing its part to assure that they have clean, drinkable water. “It’s just getting really old,” said Renee Popovich, a homeowner near Rockaway and Pyrite in northeast Rio Rancho. “We’re not getting any support from the city to provide at least drinking water for the residents.” Popovich said that her children had to spend the night with friends so they had water to get ready for school on Monday morning. The break carved out a mini arroyo in front of several homes leaving people unable to back their cars out of their driveways. Rio Rancho officials say that they are aware of the problem and have recently removed asphalt over the water main in preparation for repairing the faulty pipes, which have failed several times in recent months.

The city came and fixed the water main break in front of my house pretty quickly. This break seems much worse than mine which might be part of the problem. Perhaps the city should do a better job of communicating to the residents the problems in fixing this and how long it’s going to take so it doesn’t end up on the news. Just sayin’.

I had noticed a spot in the road in front of my house for a few weeks, thought it was a oil stain or something. I had also noticed some water at the end of the driveway that came from nowhere. The source of the water became very apparent last week when it started bubbling out of a crack in the middle of the street, right where stain was.

I called the Rio Rancho water department, they were out the next day, put a cone out and marked the street. They day after that they had fixed the leak leaving a dirt patch in it’s place, I hope they plan to come back and put some asphalt there.