A project to deliver drinking water to rural New Mexicans earned a multi million-dollar boost from the feds this week.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation awarded $77 million to the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority, a years-long infrastructure project meant to haul water from Ute Reservoir to some 73,000 people in Clovis, Portales, Texico, Elida and Cannon Air Force Base. Officials with the project say the money will go a long way toward finishing more than 16 miles of pipelines to deliver the water.

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The state Legislature first formed the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority in 2010 as the region’s primary water source, the underground Ogallala Aquifer, showed signs of depletion. In 2018, the Ogallala Water Coordinated Agriculture Project published a white paper that said water levels here “have been in a long-term, serious decline for decades” as local development took out far more water than it put back underground.

The pipeline project to deliver what’s known as “surface water” — a term that refers to rainfall, rivers and other above-ground water surfaces that don’t make it into the aquifer — has been under construction for eight years, ENMWUA Board of Directors Chair Mike Morris said in a statement.

“We are very grateful to our federal delegation and the United States Bureau of Reclamation for their continued support of this critically important project,” Morris said, adding that the project is “on track” to begin water deliveries in the next five years.

The project has encountered its share of speed bumps over the years.

In 2023, project officials said they’d worked to bring these plans to life for more than 50 years and credited the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021, with getting it the funding it needed to near completion.

Last year, though, officials from Quay County, Logan and a handful of local landowners sued to stop the pipeline’s construction. In court filings, the coalition argued that the ENMWUA inappropriately began construction and, in some cases, the eminent domain process along the pipeline’s path, without first securing all of the funding needed for the project.

A judge in August granted ENMWUA’s motion to dismiss portions of the lawsuit brought by government entities, such as Quay County and the Village of Logan.

The case is scheduled to go to trial this summer, court records show.