Water and sewer bills for residents in Sunland Park and Santa Teresa, New Mexico, will increase by 40% starting in 2026 after the Sunland Park City Council on Wednesday approved a rate increase sought by the troubled Camino Real Regional Utility Authority.
The city of Sunland Park jointly oversees CRRUA along with the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners, which approved the rate increase last month. After the rate hike – the first for CRRUA customers since 2009 – the average combined water and sewer bill will increase from just over $48 to more than $68 in 2026.
Customers will also see smaller annual rate increases over the next four years, according to a study on CRRUA by the firm Jacobs Engineering.
CRRUA for years has been troubled by mismanagement, poor oversight and financial problems, which resulted in different failures at water treatment plants. That led to customers receiving arsenic-laden water for years as well as slimy, high pH water after caustic soda was dumped into the water supply in late 2023.
The quality of water the utility has supplied to customers over the last year has improved markedly and largely met health standards. But the utility has only $1.4 million in cash remaining and would run out of funds next year without a significant rate increase.
“There’s a lot of items that have many years of deferred maintenance that have not gotten (repaired),” said Juan Carlos Crosby, the executive director of CRRUA who began managing the utility in 2024 after the previous director retired. “The simple reason is because there was never the sufficient funds to take care of the utility, so there was not appropriate rates set.”
“Nobody likes rate increases. Nobody does. But nothing here is the same price that it was in 2009,” Crosby said. “Our utility costs much more to maintain and to operate than what is coming in.”
Sunland Park and Doña Ana County are in the middle of an increasingly acrimonious process of splitting up CRRUA.
Sunland Park is planning to establish its own municipal water utility and the county will set up a new utility to provide water and sewer service to CRRUA customers in Santa Teresa and outside the city of Sunland Park.
Residents were critical of the city Wednesday, after Sunland Park City Council representatives appeared unclear before the vote about the details of the rate increase proposal, such as the dollar amount bills would increase.
“You give a presentation for the public, for the council, you don’t even have the rates? That’s a misstep,” said Kym Hemley, a Sunland Park resident.
“The rate increase is necessary … We have things that need to be repaired that are breaking down, we need employees,” she said. “But I would have recommended a gradual increase.”
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