Las Cruces road destroyed after rain
UPDATE: On Monday, a road builder contracted by the district graded a Las Cruces road damaged by Saturday’s rain storm. Las Cruces Public School District Spokeswoman Jo Galvan says it’ll be a temporary fix, but it will probably be up to the homeowners to find a permanent solution. Galvan says on Tuesday a team will go to the road and get a closer look at the arroyo, and retention dam.
“They’re going to need to look and make sure our retention dam that was approved by the state is still working as it should be working,” Galvan said. “It may be a case of excessive rain and that you can’t control that but we need to make sure.”
On Monday, ABC-7 was unable to get clarification if the arroyo covered with dirt is also part of the state approved plan for the retention dam.
ORIGINAL STORY: One Las Cruces neighborhood had its main access road destroyed by last night’s rain. While the rains weren’t bad enough to tear up other dirt roads, neighbors say the school next door caused the flooding.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Daniel Zertuche, a neighborhood resident.
Water flooding from behind Columbia Elementary overflowed and destroyed parts of Zertuche road when water and mud reaching houses, covering tires a third of the way up, and neighbors are saying it’s the school’s fault .
“They cover the arroyo on the side of the school with dirt, with piles of dirt.SO, what happens, is the water comes in from the arroyo, from the north, and it gets flooded over there so now it’s coming down,” Zertuche said.
The water was supposed to be flowing through a man-made arroyo, but only a tiny little bit was drizzling out. Most of it is blocked by a large dirt embankment that’s on school grounds.
The built up water is starting to break through small parts of the rock wall holding it in, something that’s making residents nervous if it keeps raining.
“It will collapse the whole wall because water is leaning on the wall now. It’s gonna collapse and you see all those houses? It’s gonna take them.” said Zertuche.
The road, used by residents to get home and by parents to drop off students at the schools is being fixed temporarily, something Zertuche is paying for.
“We’re gonna pass over the bill to the school,” he explained.
We have reached out to Las Cruces Public Schools to see who is responsible for building the embankment which appears to have caused this flooding. They said they are unaware of anything that may have caused this problem and invite the neighbors to call the school district Tuesday to speak on the issue.
