The President’s Corner

​This year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country along with the 125th anniversary of the City of Farmington and the 40th anniversary of the River Reach Foundation. Our theme for Riverfest this year reflects those anniversaries. The theme is “Flowing Through Time” and we encourage everyone to dress in your favorite time zone. Check out our Riverfest website (www.riverfestnewmexico.com) for updated information and schedules as they become available. Vendor applications are available online as well as duck tickets. Sponsorship/Donation opportunities along with Volunteer opportunities are also available online at www.riverfestnewmexico.com

Our elections for year 2026 were held and the following officers are as follows:
President – D’Ann Waters
Vice-President – Gary Hanson
Treasurer – Evan Noel
Secretary – open (Bernadette Alarid will continue though for the present time).
We have hired Kristina Ottak as our Administrator and Kendra Allen continues as event administrative assistant.

We welcome the following newest members, Paul Montoia, president of the San Juan Water Shed Group, Inc,; Laura Werbner, manager of Marketing & Communications at the San Juan Regional Medical Center; and Rebecca Werth.

River Reach Foundation News

The River Reach Foundation continues to meet the first Thursday of the month at 6 PM in the Civic Center.  Last month, at our February meeting, we introduced the City of Farmington’s new Nature Center Manager, Micah Kipple.  He gave us news of what has been happening since he took over as manager there and gave a very exciting and informative talk on what new happenings he foresees happening at the Nature Center and encouraged the Foundation to join with him and his staff in upcoming activities he is planning there.  One of the first events that we will be jointly doing is wrapping as many as possible our non-evasive trees on Saturday April 25^th.  Watch for more information on this very necessary project and plan on joining us in helping protect our trees from beaver damage.

Another project that the Foundation has in the works is adding 3 metal shade structures at Cottonwood Landing.  That is a beautiful plaza but not very well used because of the lack of shade there.  Two of the shade structures will be 20  ft. in length and will be placed parallel to the river. The third shade structure will be a 10 ft. X 10ft. structure which will replace the cottonwood tree that is dying in the raised center of the plaza.  Hopefully these structures will be in place prior to this year’s Riverfest event.  During the installation of the shade structures there will be some areas blocked off in that area for safety reasons. 

The next River Reach Foundation meeting will be held March 5^th at 6 PM in the Civic Center.  Our speaker will be Angelique Maldonado the City of Farmington’s Public Works manager.  She will give us an update on what is happening and future plans in public works.  It will be an interesting presentation so plan on attending if at all possible.

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