While the prospective Buckman Direct Diversion project is aimed at providing a more sustainable supply of drinking water for Santa Fe, it will drastically increase electricity use.

Although planners considered alternative energy sources such as solar and hydroelectric power to pump and treat the water, city and county officials who are jointly overseeing the diversion are now near an agreement with Public Service Company of New Mexico, the state's largest electricity and natural gas provider.

The partnership with PNM does not mean the project will always draw all its power from that source, said project manager Rick Carpenter.

"For the sake of expediency and practicality, moving forward with PNM makes the most sense at this point, and it is our hope that we might be able to explore alternative sources of power in the future, renewable sources," said Carpenter.

The electricity will be used to pump water uphill from the Rio Grande about 1,100 vertical feet and across a distance of about 11 miles to a new treatment plant, which also requires electricity to clean the water.

A firm that has been hired to design and build the $181 million project estimates it will use about 27 million kilowatt-hours per year. To put that in perspective, the city's water division currently uses 10 million kwh per year, and the rest of city government uses 28 million kwh per year, according to city data.

Although the city will use less power in its well field when the diversion project comes on line — and will share costs with the county — the project could increase the city's energy demand by nearly 70 percent.

For the city's energy specialist, Nick Schiavo, those figures are daunting. Schiavo is the person at City Hall tasked with reducing overall energy consumption and cutting the city's carbon footprint by 50 percent in five years.

"Luckily it is going to be a slow ramp up," he said, noting that the diversion project is not scheduled to be operational until the spring of 2011, and even then, it won't likely use all the estimated power for several years after that.

"Between now and then it gives me a chance to cut back on the energy use in other areas," said Schiavo.

The city should have no trouble trimming its use in nonwater areas by about 20 percent within the next four years, he said.

Schiavo didn't analyze the energy plan for the diversion project but said he trusts the work of Norm Guame, an engineer who formerly headed the Interstate Stream Commission and who has been a consultant on the project since the early planning stages.

In a recent interview, Guame said, "This facility has been designed with energy efficiency as one of the primary objectives."

One of Guame's jobs last year was to evaluate alternatives to using PNM. He studied the idea of purchasing power from the Los Alamos County utility and establishing a Santa Fe government-run utility, but concluded that neither plan was feasible because of uncertainty and risk.

But opportunities for alternative energy might not be as far away as previously thought.

For example, the Bureau of Land Management — which happens to own the land on which the diversion will be built as well as adjacent land — is beginning a study of how to locate alternative energy on the property it oversees.

On a separate track, the city is already considering a plan that would put a solar array at the wastewater treatment plant that would produce about 1.2 million kwh per year. Schiavo said a larger project near the proposed drinking-water treatment plant could be feasible if the small project is successful.

Local members of the Sierra Club have been urging that those ideas stay on the front burner.

"What we are hoping fervently is that that you won't let the difficulties deter you from pursuing this really important goal because we feel that we're at the crossroads for the future of our planet," club member Pat Carlton said at a recent board meeting.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that PNM already gets 20 percent of its power from alternative energy sources including wind and solar power, the amount the state requires the company to have in place by 2020. The company is also considering a large solar generation facility.

The city and county, which will both use water rates, bonds and taxes to pay their portion of the project, are dividing costs with Las Campanas, a luxury home development that will also draw water from part of the system.

Planners are negotiating with PNM about how much the electricity will cost and how much the company will pay for required infrastructure. Current estimates indicate PNM will receive about $3 million from the diversion board toward the cost of the new structures if the board agrees to buy a certain amount of power during peak rate periods for the next 10 years. Provisions in the contract lay out what would happen if alternatives are developed before that time.

The diversion project has the capacity to produce up to 2.5 billion gallons of water each year for the region and allow officials to slow pumping of groundwater. The city has water rights for 60 percent of the capacity, and the county and Las Campanas are able to transfer water rights to use the rest.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.

ON THE WEB

• Visit the Web site at www.BDDproject.org to learn more about the Buckman Direct Diversion.