Santa Fe County recently reached an agreement with Pojoaque Pueblo that will allow the county to build a new transfer station on pueblo-owned land adjacent to the existing county facility in Jacona.

The county will construct a $500,000 building on about nine acres to enclose the trash and prevent it from blowing away.

In return, Santa Fe County will pay the pueblo $1 per year rent for the next 25 years and allow Pojoaque Pueblo members and affiliated business to dump solid waste there for no charge. The lease is renewable for two 10-year terms. At the end of the lease, Pojoaque Pueblo would own the building erected on the land.

County Growth Management Director James Lujan said such an agreement has been "in the making" for nine years and "finally came to pass."

"Right now," Lujan said, "it's just out in the open there, so we wanted to build an enclosed building. We had to get a formal agreement from them."

"Sometimes it takes that long to work with different governments," said County Manager Roman Abeyta. "They change governors every two years. It just takes time."

Santa Fe County has operated transfer stations on Pojoaque Pueblo and Tesuque Pueblo land for more than 10 years.

But those agreements have been much less formal than the one approved at the Sept. 8 Santa Fe County Commission meeting.

County staff had difficulty finding current lease agreements with either pueblo for the use of the land where the existing transfer stations are located — and gave conflicting information about whether such agreements even existed.

County staff were able to provide two letters from the Pojoaque Pueblo Enterprise Corporation to Santa Fe County stating that the county's rent for the period between January 2006 and December 2007 was $681.25 per month.

According to the documents, the county use of pueblo land "in absence of a written agreement is on a month-to-month term," and all terms and conditions "are subject to change at any time."

The county could not produce documentation of what the monthly payment had been for other time periods.

According to county records, the Jacona transfer station generated more trash in 2008 — about 3,252 tons — than any of the county's other transfer stations.

The transfer station in La Cienega was the next closest, generating about 2,643 tons in 2008. Santa Fe County pays tipping fees of $32.50 per ton to dump trash at the joint city-county-owned Caja del Rio Landfill.

The only documentation of the county's arrangements with Tesuque Pueblo that was supplied to The New Mexican was a "revocable permit" issued by the pueblo covering a 10-month period between March 1998 and December 1998. That agreement gives Santa Fe County permission to operate the transfer station on a quarter-acre piece of pueblo-owned property in exchange for granting the Tesuque Trailer Village and Camel Rock RV Campground "special rates" for Dumpster services.

According to the pueblo's 2006 application to open a billable account with the county, entities with billable accounts are required to pay based on the "actual weight of its loads."

But county documents indicate the pueblo was charged a flat fee of $180 for pickup of the commercial trash containers in 1998 — the same rate for the service today.

Tesuque Pueblo is the only entity that gets that type of service from the county. All other commercial and individual customers, including Pojoaque Pueblo, transport their own trash to one of the county transfer stations.

Olivar Barela, who has been the county's solid waste manager for a about a year, said he didn't know the specifics of the agreement with Tesuque Pueblo. "I haven't seen anything in writing," Barela said. "It's just one of those kind of deals, where you have a situation where it's just, you walk in and that's the way they do things, and that's the way it is."

Messages left at the administrative offices of Pojoaque Pueblo and the Pueblo of Tesuque seeking information were not returned.

Abeyta said it's not customary for Santa Fe County to make handshake deals with the pueblos, but he said there could have been a verbal agreement made 20 or 30 years ago that he doesn't know about. Abeyta said another possibility is that there are written agreements, but they can't be found.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.