This dead Horse Chestnut tree on Paseo Peralta at La Residencia Nursing Center is a metaphor for the mismanagement of the water situation and the operation of the City Water Division by Mayor Delgado and the City Council.

One of the many facets of their mismanagement is the failure to require Las Campanas to comply with the Water Shortage Emergency Ordinance (Ordinance).

Las Campanas uses several times the volume of water of any other user on the City water system. Currently Las Campanas is using 800,000 gallons per day of fresh water that is about 8% of the fresh water currently available to the entire community of Santa Fe.

Stages 2 and 3 of the Ordinance were first imposed in 1996. These stages have required that outdoor watering be limited to three days or one day per week respectively. Since that time to the present Las Campanas has never reduced the watering of its 36 holes of golf courses and its extensive residential commons acreage to meet these restrictions.

As a result of this greatly disproportionate water consumption by Las Campanas the residents of Santa Fe have had to sacrifice their landscaping. The aquifer from which the City’s Buckman wells draw its water has been depleted by hundreds of millions of gallons more than would have occurred had Las Campanas complied with the Ordinance.

For six long years the Mayor and the City Council have not required Las Campanas to comply with the restrictions imposed on other City water users and have even refused to seek a legal determination as to whether Las Campanas is subject to the Ordinance.

This year, faced with increasingly loud complaints by Santa Feans, the Mayor and City Council struck a deal with Las Campanas whereby it agreed to reduce it daily consumption of fresh water to 800,000 gallons in return for the daily delivery of 400,000 gallons of effluent from the City. The agreement was signed by Mayor Delgado and William Deihl, president of Las Campanas, on June 5, 2002 and it will terminate on September 15, 2002.

This deal continued to avoid the question of whether Las Campanas is subject to the Ordinance. However at the June 12 City Council meeting Mayor Delgado emphatically stated that the City would immediately seek a declaratory judgment to determine this question.

Two months have passed and City Government refuses to say when or even if a suit for a declaratory judgment would be filed. Mayor Delgado met privately with Mr. Deihl to contrive a deal whereby Las Campanas could continue to avoid compliance with the Ordinance. Yet Mayor Delgado refuses to return telephone calls or reply to emails from disinterested Santa Feans seeking information about this issue.

On September 16, 2002 the Mayor and City Council will again be in the position of claiming that they have no power to compel Las Campanas to comply with the Ordinance and Las Campanas would be able to increase its consumption of fresh water to previous levels. In September 2001 the consumption of fresh water by Las Campanas averaged 1,364,000 gallons per day.