Corrales starts fire line project to strengthen village water supply

A week-long construction project started at the Corrales Recreation Center and Growers’ Market lot to push more reliable fire-suppression water into Corrales, with crews boring under Corrales Road and tying into a line already run along Andrews Lane and the Interior Drain.

The village said the work, announced April 15, was expected to take about a week and should not affect traffic on Corrales Road unless lane closures became necessary. The new connection will run from the recreation center water tank through the Growers’ Market lot, under Corrales Road and into a line on the Priestly right-of-way that leads toward Andrews Lane.

At the center of the project is a more interconnected water system designed to give firefighters more than one path to water and pressure when it matters most. The new line will connect three tanks, the main fire station tank, the K-8 school tank and the recreation center tank, and feed hydrants along Corrales Road, Dixon Lane and Andrews Lane.

The effort is the latest piece of a longer push by Fire Chief Anthony Martinez and village officials to expand hydrant coverage and create redundancy in a community where fire risk, open space and scattered development make dependable water delivery a priority. Mayor Fred Hashimoto said in a March 13 message that Martinez began fire suppression lines and hydrants in Corrales 21 years ago, and that the project had only recently gained momentum as residents and legislators recognized its value.

Hashimoto also said very little water was now coming down the Clear Ditch, which made it an unreliable backup source for firefighting. That has pushed the village to rely more heavily on pumping stations, gravity-fed tanks and fixed water lines to keep pressure available even when ditch flows are low.

In July 2025, Martinez told the council that Corrales’ fire-suppression resources included several water tanks holding thousands of gallons and three pumping stations in operation. He said crews had already connected the Loma Larga pumping station to the main fire station pumping station, six hydrants had been installed on Andrews Lane and a seventh was expected, and the next phase would include about 2,800 feet of pipe south from the tank behind Corrales Elementary School plus six hydrants, including one by the village complex.

Village officials have described the broader system as a way to create a “wet curtain” to help keep fire from spreading from the Bosque toward nearby neighborhoods. After the recreation center connection, the next step is to extend the Interior Drain pipe down Andrews Lane past Meadowlark Lane to a hydrant near a Bosque gate, adding another layer of protection to a network the village sees as essential for homes, public facilities and the Bosque edge.