Jun. 19—Following several citations from the federal government that did not include financial penalties, the city of Santa Fe has been found in violation of discharge permits for its wastewater treatment plant by the state and fined $2.3 million.

“We’re looking at over a year where water quality standards were exceeded,” said Susan Lucas Kamat, the point source regulation section program manager with the New Mexico Environment Department.

Lucas Kamat said the department issued the city a notice of noncompliance in February and followed it up with the administrative order May 16. The fine was calculated based on the amount of time the plant has been in violation of discharge standards and the health hazards posed to the users of the Santa Fe River, which is used for irrigation, livestock, recreation and other purposes, by the high levels of E. coli.

“There’s a pretty high potential for harm,” she said.

The order requires the city to submit a comprehensive written plan on how it intends to eliminate the violations and a schedule of actions to correct each deficiency.

“The plan may include interim corrective measures to address water quality standard violations cited herein as quickly as possible, followed by subsequent permanent measures,” the order states.

It also requires the city to state preventative measures it will take to prevent similar violations from reoccurring and to submit semiannual status updates to NMED, among other requirements.

A response to the administrative order from the city was due to NMED on Monday. Lucas Kamat said the city submitted a response by the due date and requested a hearing, which would go before the Water Quality Control Commission.

She could not comment Tuesday on the contents of the response, which she said was being reviewed by the department’s Office of General Counsel.

Santa Fe Public Works and Utilities Department Director John Dupuis said the city had already been in the process of working on more repairs to the plant at the time the order was received.

“We know we’re out of compliance; that’s not anything we didn’t expect,” he said in an interview late last week.

A series of maintenance issues that began in earnest last spring has caused the plant to send effluent tainted with E. coli bacteria well above the limits set by state and federal agencies into the Santa Fe River.

Downstream residents of the Santa Fe River have said they have experienced issues with the plant going back decades and are also concerned the it could be contributing to the contamination of groundwater in La Cienega and La Cieneguilla with PFAS, or so-called “forever chemicals.”

The city has embarked on a series of expensive repairs to the plant but has struggled to stay in compliance with discharge limits and is in the process of putting together a study on long-term options for repairing or replacing the plant. A new facility would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Santa Fe Watershed Association has been posting data on the plant’s effluent discharges on its website since last year. The city significantly exceeded state and federal limits in May and early June, according to the most recent data, with E. coli levels listed as “too numerous to count” on three separate days last month.

Dupuis said the city hopes it can reach an agreement with the state where the cost of the fine could be put toward repairs to the wastewater treatment plant.

Lucas Kamat said she could not comment on whether that was a possibility.

“At this point, all I can say is that I anticipate that it’s going to be on a future Water Quality Control Commission agenda, and I can’t speak to possible future settlement agreements or [commission] decisions,” she said.

The 13-member board hears appeals related to the Environment Department’s water permitting and enforcement actions and carries out state and federal water quality regulations.

Since March, representatives from the Public Utilities Department and contractors working on the plant have been meeting weekly with NMED to discuss what the city is doing to bring the plant back into compliance.

The city is in the process of pursuing about $8 million in contracts for repair work to the plant, and Dupuis said an additional several million dollars for more work will likely be requested soon.

Dupuis, who joined the city in early 2023, said it would have been ideal if work on the 61-year-old facility had begun a decade ago. As it stands, he said, “we’re paying emergency rates for these fixes.”

Lucas Kamat said the department does not have a position on whether the city needs a new wastewater treatment plant, as is the belief of many downstream residents and environmental advocates, saying the city is the expert on what it needs.

“I do think professionally, a new plant may be more efficient than trying to Band-Aid the existing plant,” she said.

If there’s a silver lining to the order, Dupuis said it’s that it shows an outside agency is invested in the plant getting fixed, which could spur city officials to take action on a time frame faster than is typically supported by the mechanisms of city government.

“To me, it’s a blessing as long as in the end we get to fix the plant … and don’t have to have the ratepayers pay for something they shouldn’t,” he said.

His main concern with the fine is that if the Environment Department doesn’t agree to let the city put the costs of the fine toward work on the plant, it would unnecessarily burden taxpayers and cut into the amount of money the city has to spend on a permanent solution.

“Any dollar makes a difference,” he said. If the city ends up having to pay the state ongoing fines, “that means we’re significantly limited in what we can do long term.”