ASDWA Hosting Moonshot Missions for Upcoming Small System Webinar

ASDWA will be hosting Moonshot Missions for an upcoming webinar discussing their work with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) assisting a struggling small system. The webinar will be held on Monday, July 12th from 1:00-2:00pm (Eastern). To register, click here.

Background:

The village of Cimarron is a small community in Colifax County New Mexico, covering approximately 2 square miles with a population of just under 1,000. The utility owns, operates, and maintains both its water and wastewater systems. Cimarron is a low-income community, with 450 households whose median income is below $27,108, resulting in a poverty rate of 29.1 percent.

Moonshot Missions, a nonprofit supporting underserved water and wastewater utilities, was introduced to the village of Cimarron through the NMED. Moonshot Missions began its process and conducted a diagnostic evaluation of the utility to assist in lifting a long-standing boil water advisory for high turbidity and failure to comply with monitoring and sampling regulations.

Leveraging its relationship with both the Village of Cimarron and NMED, Moonshot Missions offered peer guidance and developed an action plan to improve internal operations and to lift the boil water advisory. By following the steps in the proposed action plan the utility (1) improved water quality through treatment process optimization, (2) gained an improved understanding of their own water system, and (3) updated their standard operating procedures to reflect current operations and related monitoring and reporting requirements.