If you were standing on the banks of the Rio Grande west of Santa Fe last month, you might have been a witness to a historic milestone without even realizing it.

With the push of a button at the Buckman Direct Diversion, water traveled away from the river and into new infrastructure that will eventually provide a water source for the region.

The moment passed without any fanfare, and once officials determined that the first set of raw-water pumps was working correctly, they sent the water right back to the river.

But that was it — the first time river water entered the new structures.

For the next eight months, extensive testing of the water project is aimed at making sure it was properly constructed and will function as planned. Treated river water could get to city and county water pipes as soon as January.

By this time next year, the diversion structure should be pulling thousands of gallons of water from the river every day, a series of pump stations will be sending it uphill to the treatment plant, and 15 miles of pipeline will be delivering it to water customers. When operating at full capacity, the project can divert up to 8,730 acre-feet of water per year. An acre-foot is equal to 325,851 gallons.

Officials say using surface water from the river will save groundwater resources by reducing dependence on them.

The state engineer granted permission in August for diversions to begin at the Buckman structure. Officially, notes project attorney Kyle Harwood, water pulled from the river doesn't count as a diversion from a regulatory perspective unless it is funneled away from the watercourse and passes through a meter.

"The river diversion testing that has happened so far is very minor from an engineering point of view, but could be considered historic by the public because it was when water was first diverted from the river," he said.

Project Engineer Mark Ryan said drawing small amounts of water into the raw-water lift station adjacent to the underwater diversion structure didn't even make a ripple on the river's surface.

"This really isn't diverting water because it really isn't going anywhere. It is just that we are testing the pumps and rotating the pumps and making sure they are not vibrating and that they are working to the right head," he said.

The next step in the testing process will be to pump raw water out of the lift station to the next booster station. If that works, the second booster station would be activated, then water would get sent beyond it to the new treatment plant, built about 11 miles from the river off Caja del Rio Road.

"We are going to use that water in the treatment plant to run it in a racetrack fashion," Ryan explained. "The means we will just running it around in a circle inside the treatment plant where nothing goes out to the system. It is really to just check out all the instrumentation, the electrical, the mechanical and all of that. We keep doing that, and doing that, and doing that, and we should be ready to put water out into the system by Jan. 1."

Contractors who built the treatment plant — now about 93 percent complete — will provide certified operators for all the testing while already hired Buckman workers complete training during what planners are calling "pre-acceptance testing." The system, which cost upward of $215 million, is scheduled to get turned over to the city and county in April.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.