CARLSBAD, N.M. (KRQE) – It’s a scary thought: a giant brine well that could become a massive sinkhole at any moment, swallowing up drivers and part of a New Mexico town.
State lawmakers know the clock is ticking and they have to figure out how to come up with the money to fix it. State Rep. Cathrynne Brown says taking care of the problem now will be a lot less expensive than waiting for the brine well to collapse
After extracting brine by pumping water into old salt mines a massive sinkhole was created in Carlsbad. The well underground is the size of two football fields with caverns running six hundred feet deep. It runs under two busy highways, a collapse would be devastating.
“The time for talk is over and we need to start remediation. Of course, we have to find the money to do it,” Brown said.
The issue even got national attention from CNN in 2013, with experts saying there will be a collapse.
“It’s not a matter of if, but when. But, when could be a century from now or next week,” said Lewis Land, geologist at New Mexico Tech.
Either way, Rep. Brown doesn’t want to wait for that to happen.
“My greatest concern is loss of life, if people are traveling over that area, if we can’t stop it before it caves in, we will potentially have a lot of lives lost,” Brown said.
Brown has proposed a slate of bills that would collect $25 million from different state funds in order to jump-start the project to back-fill the well.
“One of the bills would propose to go use part of the corrective actions fund that is existing in the state already to provide some money for brine well remediation,” she explained.
Some of the money would come from oil and gas taxes and a water project fund. Brown is also asking for $1 million from the state road fund, which she says is a steal compared to what it will cost to fix the roads if they collapse.
“If we lose those highways it’ll be upwards of $80 million just to fix the highways, so we think $1 million at this point in time would be very well spent so we can preserve those highways,” Brown said.
There has been talk of building an alternate route for drivers who want to avoid those highways, but there’s no money for it.
Rep. Brown says a collapse would have $1 billion economic impact on the state.
According to officials in Carlsbad, a collapse would also sever a canal, cutting off water to more than three-quarters of the city.
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