People in the East Wilson and East Pershing areas were left without water from about 3:45 pm Nov. 28 to approximately 5 pm, when an unscheduled leaking water line on Second Street was discovered around 9 am and the Gallup Water Department worked to make repairs there.

Dennis Romero, Executive Director of Water and Sanitation for Gallup told the Sun that the leak was in a pipe with flowable fill, a workable slurry of cement which adds weight around the pipe and weakens it when it hardens.

The pipe had a lengthwise crack.

In order to make the repair, water pressure was killed to the East Pershing and East Wilson area in the afternoon, but was restored by around 5 pm.

In keeping with the Christmas holiday season, the state has announced a tiered “red to green” system which is meant to help counties reopen further when they meet key health metrics.

The shift in the state’s “reopening” framework will come after a two-week “reset” period, in which state health officials enacted the most heightened level of statewide public health restrictions upon places of business and day-to-day activities in an effort to blunt the spread of COVID-19 all across New Mexico.

“The county-by-county framework enables counties, and the businesses and nonprofits within their borders, to operate with fewer restrictions when they slow the spread of the virus...

The City of Gallup experienced a water outage on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26 when there was a break on a connector near the airport which affects the northside and southside of the city.

Gallup Water and Sanitation Executive Director Dennis Romero told the Gallup Sun Nov. 27, “It looks like something started about 3 am and didn’t break until 7:05 yesterday morning.”

He said the department learned of the problem around 7:10 am, when complaints began coming in from the trademark pressure zone.

The leak was isolated around 9 am and Romero said it took another two and a half hours to re-route the water to bring the pressure back up.

Water service for the area was restored around 1:30...

Invent a — whatchamacallit

A refrain from an old Arlo Guthrie tune is “I don’t want a pickle, I just want to ride my motorcycle.”  With the closing of the power plant at Prewitt and the shutdown at the refinery, what our county could use is a motorcycle manufacturing facility. The county and the state are laying out a number of aids to help existing businesses to improve and to encourage new business ideas that can flourish as going concerns.

To get your entrepreneurial juices flowing I’ve listed below several very successful ventures started by individuals who in dealing with problems in their lives made transformative innovations – and made themselves lots of...