Bishop’s Lodge neighbours consider legal action |

Some residents of the Village of Tesuque say they are considering legal action in response to Bishop’s Lodge’s proposal to discharge treated wastewater into Little Tesuque Creek over the winter.

About 60 people met Thursday night at the Tesuque Volunteer Fire District to discuss the design submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency for approval. The requested permit coincides with the construction of a new miniature facility for the Bishop’s Lodge Resort after the old facility has been inoperable for years.

Elissa Eccles, a self-described 14th-generation resident of the village of Tesuque who hosted the meeting, told SFR that it was “not impossible” for residents to go to court.

“We are considering legal action,” she says, “and there is an anonymous benefactor who has offered to cover the legal fees.”

She points out that the proposed permit affects not only Tesuque Pueblo and Tesuque Village, “but also all other communities downstream” through which the creek flows until it reaches the Rio Grande.

“What ‘treated’ means is the question and the reason for most of our concerns. Whether your home is connected to a private, community or municipal well, they are all served by the Tesuque aquifer, which, if contaminated, can be harmful to the community,” Eccles said at the start of the meeting. “If at any point Bishop’s Lodge is negligent in any way, it puts us at great risk from PFAS, also known as cancer-causing chemicals, and other contaminants in our water.”

Eccles says she held the meeting to encourage others to request a public hearing from the EPA and an extension of the current public comment period on the proposal, which ends July 1, as well as to combat misinformation. The approval will take effect 30 days after the comment period ends.

“Most of our community are not water experts, but we question so many things in this permit,” Eccles says. “When our questions aren’t answered, it’s like we have no say or no choice.”

But most of those attending the meeting didn’t just want answers – they wanted the proposal stopped.

Rusty Day, another resident who attended the meeting, said he believed the purpose of the plan was to transfer “the harm and risk” from Bishops Lodge Resort to the community.

“This is the most reprehensible thing here,” Day said.

Day added that residents may not know the long-term effects of the wastewater discharge for 20 to 30 years, but he believed Bishop’s Lodge Resort could be held liable for violating the state’s tort law. A tort refers to an act or omission that causes harm to persons or property.

“The EPA is not the only law that applies here, and it has no jurisdiction or power to allow one neighbor to commit a tort against another neighbor,” Day said. “I don’t think the Lodge wants to examine the liability of everyone in this room and everyone out there and all the Pueblos for contaminating your groundwater, your drinking water well and your crops.”

The draft proposal requires the hotel to conduct regular water tests and submit quarterly reports to the EPA, and sets limits for various contaminants, said Susan Lucas Kamat, manager of point source regulation for the New Mexico Department of Environmental Quality, who works in the department’s Surface Water Quality Bureau.

“Our staff also monitor these reports and this data,” Lucas Kamat tells SFR. “So it’s not like an approval is given and nobody ever does anything again after that.”

County Commissioner Justin Greene, whose district covers the area, also attended the meeting. He told SFR that because the permitting comes through the EPA, “Santa Fe County has no regulatory oversight, so there’s not much we can do — at some level.”

However, county officials have contacted Bishops Lodge representatives and state agencies and suggested alternatives such as a soakaway – a piece of land where water from a septic tank can seep back into the ground, Greene adds.

“No is not an answer, what is the answer, so we are trying to say, ‘Come out into the light,'” he said during the meeting, noting that county officials had helped organize a public meeting with NMED and Bishops Lodge officials next week. “We are trying to be as realistic as possible, but at the same time reduce fear.”

The meeting will be held on Monday, June 24 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Tesuque Volunteer Fire District, where officials will answer questions and take comments.

Also in the works, Greene says, is a plan to create a regional sewer system that would connect resorts, the opera, Tesuque Pueblo and more, which would “certainly eliminate the need to discharge sewage into the creek.” Santa Fe County officials have allocated the first $250,000 of the budget for a preliminary engineering report to develop the project, he adds, though the project itself is “longer term” because planning, design, construction and implementation will take years.

“We have been working on a regional solution since I took office and the current situation at Bishop’s Lodge Resort is risky and in some ways dangerous because of the large amounts of wastewater that are stored there and trucked down our roads,” says Greene. “So this new facility is a good first step. However, if we can avoid discharging it into the river, that would be a better solution.”