Las Cruces City Council votes unanimously to condemn portion of busy parking lot

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (KVIA) -- Perchloroethylene, also known as PCE, is a cancer-causing chemical often used in dry cleaning and automotive cleanup, and it was discovered in unsafe levels in four Las Cruces drinking wells over thirty years ago.

The EPA says maintenance work in the Griggs and Walnut area led to the chemical being spilled, and then seeping into the groundwater.

This led to the creation of the Griggs and Walnut Superfund site, the first and only in Dona Ana County, where the city operates a water treatment plant to erase the contamination.

The operation continues to require more infrastructure from the EPA, including two new monitoring wells to examine the size of the contamination plume.

An expert with the city says a parking lot located at 2240 E Lohman, less than half a mile away from the Superfund site, is the best place to build them based on EPA data.

Businesses near the parking lot include Best Buy, Staples, and Walgreens.

However, efforts from the city to buy a portion of the lot from the owners have failed, leading to the city to vote on condemning it.

After being condemned, this would lead to the city retrieving the property through eminent domain.

“We have no choice but to install monitoring wells where the EPA has told us to move forward," said Las Cruces Utilities Director Adrienne Widmer during Monday's council meeting.

“It does sound like we’ve made serious efforts to remediate this in every other way possible," said District 5 Councilor Becky Corran following Widmer's presentation.

City Council voted unanimously Monday to seize the property through eminent domain, something the city says they rarely do, and something heavily restricted by the state of New Mexico.

“We’ve never used eminent domain in the time I’ve been here, it’s highly unusual circumstances, and it’s related to something that we have to remediate in our city," added Corran.

ABC-7 attempted to contact the lot owner, listed in property records as VS&G Properties, LLC in San Jose, CA for comment, but could not find a point of contact.

The city says construction of the wells aren’t expected to impact customers of the Best Buy and Staples near the parking lot.

Construction is expected to finish up before the holiday shopping season, and as the footprints of wells will actually be flat, allowing people to park right on top of them.