Residents press Huachuca City on water taste, aging pipes and proposal for smart meters

Multiple residents raised water‑quality and billing concerns during the CDBG public hearing. "The water is bad, the past 7 years my dog doesn’t even drink the water," resident Frances Mock told the council, describing long‑standing taste or rust concerns and asking for pipe work. Town Manager Suzanne Harvey responded that the town posts its consumer confidence report and that testing is submitted monthly to ADEQ, stating, "our water is absolutely good," while acknowledging residents' taste complaints and the need for an evaluation of the distribution system.

Residents and councilmembers also proposed replacing older meters with meters that read by the hundreds of gallons or automated 'smart' meters so bills more accurately reflect use and so the town can detect leaks. SEAGO's William Osborne said a typical path would be to use SSP funds for assessments and design or to include meter replacement as part of a broader water infrastructure application; he cautioned that a regional CDBG application is usually a single implementation project and stressed the importance of project specificity in the candidate list.

Council directed staff to include water‑system assessment, meter replacement and longer‑term pipe repair as candidate projects for future grant applications; no funding decision was made at the hearing.