Gallup posts water outage notice, warns of drinking water deficiencies

Gallup residents on Philiphina Avenue, Nizhoni Boulevard, Country Club, Kiva Drive, Diamond Circle, Boulder Drive, Susan Avenue, Red Rock Drive and Linda Drive were set to lose water service for valve maintenance from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. May 28, putting daily routines, businesses and public facilities on notice all at once.

The outage alert came alongside a separate drinking-water notice posted by the City of Gallup on Feb. 13, warning that the city water system had not corrected significant deficiencies found in a routine sanitary survey by the New Mexico Environment Department-Water Protection Compliance & Enforcement Bureau on Oct. 17 and 18, 2023. The city said the survey found eight storage facilities that had not been recently inspected: Cresto Sr Tank, Cresto Jr Tank, Grandview Sr Tank, Grandview Jr Tank, Gamerco Tank #1 (East), Gamerco Tank #2 (Middle), Gamerco Tank #3 (West) and Church Rock Storage Tank.

City officials said customers did not need to boil water or take corrective action, but they urged residents to pass the notice along in apartments, nursing homes, schools and businesses. The city said it was cleaning and inspecting the tanks and working with the state on a corrective action plan. The state, in a notice of violation dated Feb. 9, said Gallup Water System failed to correct the sanitary-survey deficiencies within the required 120-day window and was not in compliance with Safe Drinking Water Act requirements.

The notices landed in a city that has spent years wrestling with supply limits. A July 2025 Gallup water-supply presentation said the community has relied on deep groundwater rather than surface water, has built or acquired more than 45 wells over 120 years, and now has only 15 wells still in service or operational. It said 30 wells are out of service because of falling water levels, reduced pumping, sedimentation, water-quality problems and higher costs.

That same presentation said Gallup projected in 1998 that it would not be able to meet demand by 2010 without new water sources. It also pointed to the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project as a long-term answer, saying the project had been expected to deliver up to 7,500 acre-feet of water by Dec. 31, 2024. For Gallup and surrounding McKinley County communities, the combination of a daylong outage and a drinking-water compliance notice kept water front and center as an immediate public-service issue.