TIMBERON, N.M. — For months, residents of this small Otero County mountain community relied on one person for a plain-language read on their water system: how full the tanks were, whether a boil advisory was active, and what crews were doing about it. On Saturday, that person — JJ Duckett, a longtime TWSD board member and former general manager — announced in a Facebook post to the “Timberon, NM” group that he was ending the practice. Going forward, he wrote, updates would come from Treasurer Josh McCurdy or the Timberon Water and Sanitation District office.

The announcement came in the same post as a routine tank report: Tank 2 at roughly 18 feet, Tank 3 at about 9 feet, Tank 5 at 3.3 feet and filling, Tank 6 at just over 31 feet. Duckett also noted the district’s precautionary boil-water advisory remains in effect — he stressed no bacteria has been detected and the advisory is precautionary — and that a transfer pump installation, delayed by an equipment problem at Statewide, is now set for Monday.

The timing question

The change lands at a moment of unusually heavy outside scrutiny of TWSD. Chief among the outlets pressing the district is 2nd Life Media’s Alamogordo Town News, which alongside its streaming sister outlet, KALHRadio.org, has built a reputation across Otero County and Southern New Mexico through its digital reach, into Alamogordo, Las Cruces, as well as Santa Fe and points beyond — as a persistent voice on local accountability stories. The organization is affiliated with the Online News Association and LION Publishers, the national network for independent local newsrooms and is a member of the New Mexico Press Association.

2nd Life Media is not alone in coverage critical of the Timberon water situation. Source New Mexico, a nonprofit statehouse outlet with a broad readership across the state, has separately covered the district’s regulatory troubles, including a state utility commissioner’s public suggestion that TWSD be placed in receivership. Together, the two organizations’ reporting over the past several months has documented: a June 2026 finding by the New Mexico Environment Department that TWSD failed to notify customers of an earlier drinking-water violation, a $1-a-month, 10-year lease of the district’s golf course that generates no revenue for ratepayers, a records custodian who reportedly resisted a routine public records request, years of OMA violations and years of boil advisories tied to low tank levels and an aging distribution network that by some accounts loses a majority of the water it produces before it ever reaches a tap.

Given that backdrop, it’s a fair question to ask whether Duckett’s exit as the informal, near-daily voice of water updates is connected to that scrutiny — whether board leadership or the district office decided a single director should no longer be the public face of a system now facing state enforcement action and possible receivership.

That connection has not been established. Duckett’s post gives a mundane reason: he frames it as a handoff, saying the office “will be supplying information from here on.”Neither Duckett nor the TWSD board has issued a public statement. 

Centralizing public communication in the district office is seen as a defensive governance move for a utility under active state enforcement reviews, where individual board members speaking off-the-cuff can create liability or conflict with formal public notices. It’s also possible that a utility under a magnifying glass has more reason than usual to formalize who speaks for it.

What’s still unclear

Whether McCurdy or the office actually take up the daily cadence Duckett kept — tank levels, advisory status, repair timelines — remains to be seen. Residents who came to rely on his posts for real-time detail will be watching whether the office matches that frequency or reverts to the less frequent, more formal notices historically posted to timberonwater.com.

No response

This outlet sent Duckett a direct message on July 18 via instant messenger, asking why — and under what direction — the decision was made to transition water-system updates away from him, and offering him the opportunity to respond either on or off the record. The message read, in part, that the public has come to rely on his updates and that any feedback he could provide would be appreciated.

As of publication, Duckett has not responded. This story will be updated if any official responds. Anyone with direct knowledge of the internal discussions behind this decision is encouraged to contact this outlet.

Analysis: The standard doesn’t move

Whatever the reason behind Saturday’s announcement, it’s worth stating plainly what residents of a public water district are owed.

People should not have to settle for a water system that keeps its own constituents in the dark — whether that means one person’s Facebook updates disappearing without explanation, or a records custodian slow-walking a public request. And they should not be asked to shrug off violations of New Mexico’s Open Meetings Act, or of drinking-water notification requirements, simply because the violations eventually get acknowledged. 

A public body that governs itself in the open isn’t offering residents a courtesy; it’s meeting a legal floor.

It’s also true, and worth saying, that Timberon is not alone. New Mexico’s small, aging water systems are under real strain statewide — advocates and state officials have pointed to a large and growing share of rural systems facing some version of the same crisis: leaking pipelines, thin operating budgets, and workforce shortages. That context is real. But it is not a defense, and it should not function as one.

A statewide crisis explains why a system like Timberon’s is vulnerable; it does not excuse a specific board or a specific staff from the job they were elected or hired to do.

However many other utilities in New Mexico are struggling.

TWSD’s board and leadership have one mandate: deliver constant, safe, and reliable water to the people who pay for it and depend on it.

Everything else — who posts the tank levels, which outlet is asking the questions, how uncomfortable the scrutiny gets — is secondary to that. Clean dependable water is a very basic government function, those that can’t meet that standard deserve scrutiny and state or judicial oversight. Transparency is not a luxury it is a legal obligation.

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