Boiling Water, Empty Taps, and an Unreported Violation — While Timberon's Water District Gave Away Its Golf Course for $1 a Month

TIMBERON, N.M. — For a second straight week, residents of this Otero County mountain community are being told to boil their water before drinking it, cooking with it, or brushing their teeth. Some households say they have gone three to five days at a stretch with no water at all in the past two weeks, and some remain without service as this is written. It is the latest, but far from the first, breakdown in a water system that its own board chairman describes as failing faster than crews can repair it — and state records now show the district also failed to tell its own customers about a separate drinking-water violation for at least three months.

At the same time, records show the Timberon Water & Sanitation District (TWSD) — the same financially strained public utility now asking residents to boil their water and conserve during a shortage — has locked up one of its few revenue-generating public assets, the district-owned golf course and lounge building, in a 10-year lease at $1 a month, producing no rental income and no dividend to the ratepayers who own it, at the same time the district says it lacks the money to keep its swimming pool open or its pipes from failing.

A second week of boiled water and empty taps

TWSD issued a precautionary boil-water advisory on July 8, telling customers served by Tank #2 to boil their water before using it, after those customers experienced low-to-no pressure in the distribution system on July 7. The district said certified personnel collected bacteriological samples on July 9 and expected results within 24 hours, and that no contamination had been detected as of the notice. The advisory instructs residents to bring water to a rolling boil for at least one minute before drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, washing produce, mixing infant formula, or watering pets, warning that low-pressure events like this one raise the risk that bacteria such as fecal coliform or E. coli could enter the system.

A separate public update posted the same week reported several storage tanks running critically low — one at roughly 0.38 feet and another at 0.80 feet — while a malfunctioning transfer pump at the water plant remained in service pending replacement. The district said the shortage was expected to continue for several more days and asked residents to conserve, making bottled water available at the TWSD office and the Timberon Volunteer Fire Department station.

State regulators say TWSD hid an earlier violation from its own customers

Records obtained by this reporter show the water system's problems go beyond broken pipes and low tanks. In a June 9, 2026 Notice of Violation, the New Mexico Environment Department's Water Protection Compliance & Enforcement Bureau (NMED-WPCEB) found that TWSD failed to notify its own customers of a separate drinking-water violation issued three months earlier, and failed to tell the state it had done so.

According to NMED, TWSD received an original Notice of Violation on March 5, 2026 under the federal Ground Water Rule. Under state and federal regulation, TWSD was required to directly notify every customer, by mail or other direct delivery, within 30 days of that March 5 notice, and to certify to NMED within 10 days after that public notice had gone out. NMED's June 9 letter states plainly that neither happened: “Because the public notice and public notice certification form were not provided to NMED-WPCEB, the Timberon W and SD water system is in violation.”

The practical effect is that, as of NMED's letter, Timberon customers may still not have been formally told what the underlying March 5 violation concerned, more than three months after the fact. NMED's letter orders TWSD to complete the required public notice and file the certification form, and states that NMED-WPCEB “reserves the right to take additional enforcement action regarding the violations identified in this NOV, to include the issuance of an Administrative Compliance Order compelling compliance and issuing civil penalties.”

NMED also informed TWSD that, as a result of this notice, the district will appear on the department's public Enforcement Watch list, and that NMED “will issue a press release to local media highlighting your public water system as appearing on this webpage.” TWSD is set to remain listed as an active enforcement matter until it is fully resolved. This is not TWSD's only appearance on that list: NMED's Resource Protection Compliance and Enforcement Bureau separately cited the district for operating an unregistered solid waste site since 1996, in violation of state Solid Waste Rules.

Not a one-time failure

This is the third precautionary boil-water advisory TWSD has issued in five weeks. The district issued advisories on June 8 and June 16 as well, both following tank-pressure drops, and a November 2025 advisory warned residents in bold capital letters not to drink the water without boiling it first. Board Chairman Otis Price has said the roughly 50-year-old system, built with substandard materials, is now failing faster than crews can repair it, with close to 50 pipe breaks in a single month across the district's roughly 100 miles of distribution line.

The pattern is not new. A 2023 investigation into the district's infrastructure found the system was losing approximately 85 percent of the water pumped into it through leaks and breakages, much of it through thin-walled Schedule 20 PVC pipe never designed to carry pressurized drinking water, with nearly half the community's fire hydrants unusable and covered in trash bags because they no longer met pressure and flow specifications. One longtime resident described outages of two to three days a week and conditions he called worse than a developing country. Three years later, residents are living through the same pattern: tanks running dry, pressure collapsing, and boil advisories becoming close to routine rather than exceptional — now compounded by a state finding that the district failed to even tell customers about one of its violations.

A district that says it cannot afford to fix its own water system

TWSD's own public statements describe an operation in financial distress. The district announced in June that the Timberon Community Pool — which lost roughly $26,500 last summer against about $3,500 in revenue — would not open this season, citing a lack of funds. A former board chair has said the district needs $45 million to $50 million in infrastructure investment to fully overhaul the system, while a state Public Regulation Commission official has publicly floated receivership, a step that would strip the elected board of control of the district entirely. More than 200 properties are reportedly now eligible for foreclosure over unpaid standby fees, and the board has directed its attorney to review collection and foreclosure options against delinquent ratepayers.

It is against that backdrop — a utility publicly pleading poverty, cited for failing to notify customers of its own violations, unable to fund pool operations, chasing a $367,000 Colonias infrastructure grant, and moving toward foreclosing on residents' properties over unpaid water bills — that the district's handling of its golf course and lounge building stands out.

The lease: approved in public, but never priced against market value

Records show the lease was not a backroom deal. The item was posted on a publicly noticed agenda for TWSD's April 8, 2025 regular board meeting — notice went up April 5 — as New Business Item 2: “Review the revised Commercial Lease Agreement between the High Country Lounge (DTI) and TWSD and vote to approve/disapprove same.” Board minutes show Chairman David Cruey and Vice Chair Edward Hardesty outlined the terms in open session: $1 per month for a 10-year term, with Discover Timberon Incorporated (DTI) assuming all responsibility for insurance, maintenance, and utility costs, operating the golf course, and retaining 100 percent of its profits. DTI President Valarie Dwight spoke at the meeting about plans to improve the bar and golf course. Treasurer Jesse “JJ” Duckett raised a specific concern — whether DTI's insurance would actually cover the entire golf course — and then cast the lone vote against the lease when it passed 3–1.

What the record does not show, in that meeting or any surrounding one reviewed so far, is any discussion of what the golf course, lounge building, and adjoining parcel would be worth on the open market, any appraisal, or any attempt to solicit competing offers. That absence is notable because the same board, at that same April 8 meeting, separately voted to initiate a competitive bidding process for a new waste-management contract — showing the district knew how to run a bid process when it chose to use one. No such process appears to have been applied to a decade-long commitment of a public recreational asset that, under different management, might otherwise generate lease income or be sold or redeveloped to help fund the district's core water and sewer obligations.

New Mexico's Anti-Donation Clause (Article IX, Section 14) bars public bodies from making a donation, in the form of an unreciprocated gift of value, to a private person or corporation. State regulation governing leases of public real property to private entities requires either that rent reflect fair market rental value, established by appraisal or comparable means, or that the private party's in-kind consideration be documented and substantiated to the public body on a regular basis. TWSD's likely position, if the arrangement is challenged, is that DTI's assumption of insurance, maintenance, utilities, and repair costs constitutes consideration equal to or exceeding fair market rent — but nothing in the board's own record shows that comparison was ever made, calculated, or documented, then or since.

No return to the ratepayers who own the asset

Under the lease, DTI keeps 100 percent of whatever the golf course earns for the next decade. TWSD, a financially distressed public entity that answers to Timberon's ratepayers, receives $12 a year and no share of profits, while continuing to own — and remaining responsible for the underlying condition of — the golf course equipment itself.

For a district that says it cannot afford to operate its own swimming pool, keep its water tanks full, or even complete the paperwork telling customers about a drinking-water violation, handing over its most visible recreational and commercial asset for a nominal fee, with no revenue-sharing, dividend, or profit return of any kind to the district or its member-ratepayers, raises a straightforward governance question: whether the board weighed what the district gave up in potential income against what it says it urgently needs to fix the water system residents actually depend on.

An IPRA request has been filed for more information. Stay tuned…

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