Water outage forced Mesilla restaurants to turn away customers

Several Mesilla restaurants and businesses were without water on Tuesday, forcing some to turn away customers.

“We lost a little bit of business,” said Abdulai Ismail, who works for Andele’s. “We wanted to make sure we followed the right protocol that was right for us in order for us to keep running the business.”

Andele’s was closed for one to two hours while the town of Mesilla worked to fix the problem.

“Most of our customers were very understanding,” said Ayde Acosta, who also works for Andele’s. We just let them know, ‘All of Mesilla is out of water.’ They said, ‘Oh, we understand. We’ll just come back later.’

“What was somewhat annoying is not knowing when it was going to come back on,” said Lucy Rathgeber, whose father-in-law opened The Chocolate Lady in Mesilla in 1985.

She said they had three sinks of dirty dishes.

“It is very concerning, especially when we are trying to make our candy and especially this time of year, we are absolutely swamped with tourists and people coming in for their orders,” Rathgeber said. “To not be able to wash the dishes and start off again, it was concerning.”

She said she was frustrated with a lack of communication from the Town of Mesilla.

“I would like to know what it is that happened,” Rathgeber said. “Maybe a little more communication first thing to let us know.”

Several other restaurants, including La Posta and the Double Eagle confirmed they were without water for similar amounts of time.

Mayor Nora Barraza did not return calls for comment, but an employee with the town said there were “electrical issues with the pumps and within an hour and 45 minutes it was resolved” in a statement.