A rather surprising event took place on Wednesday. The U.S. House of Representatives agreed on something.
According to the story we shared yesterday, written by Colorado Newsline reporter Jennifer Shutt, Republicans and Democrats came together in a 314-to-117 vote, to approve a ‘debt limit’ bill that no one was happy with.
Miracles happen, apparently.
Also yesterday, in Part One, I mentioned that the Town of Pagosa Springs — and specifically, the Town-operated wastewater district called Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID) — discussed the idea of cooperating with our primary sanitation district, Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) on a letter to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE).
Public health — as opposed to private health — is often closely tied to the environment, and a huge part of that relationship centers on water. Clean water, as opposed to filthy water. Pagosa Springs has access to some of the cleanest water in the United States, thanks to our close proximity to the snow-blessed San Juan Mountains.
We’ll be discussing, in a future editorial, how much it costs to treat the cleanest water in America, to make it meet CDPHE standards for safe drinking water. Daily Post reasders may have heard that the PAWSD Board approved a new $40 million treatment plant on Snowball Road to replace an aging treatment plant at that same location.
Pagosa water customers will pay for that new plant, with a little bit of help from a state grant.
At the other end of the water system, Pagosa Springs generates millions of gallons per day of unclean wastewater from its homes and businesses, and we have to dump that water somewhere, following treatment.
Disclosure: Although I currently serve on the PAWSD Board of Directors, the opinions in this editorial are purely my own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the PAWSD Board or staff.
As our Daily Post readers are likely aware, PSSGID no longer treats wastewater, as of 2016. Instead, the wastewater collected by the PSSGID sewer system is pumped — uphill — to the PAWSD treatment plant adjacent to the Vista mobile home park. Following treatment, the water is directed into Stollsteimer Creek, which flows into the Piedra River, which flows into Navajo Reservoir and then into the San Juan River, which flows into Lake Powell and ultimately irrigates cotton farms in Arizona and almond trees in California.
Given that PAWSD is treating the PSSGID wastewater, we can understand why the boards of the two district (and their staff) might want to write a joint letter to CDPHE.
The proposed letter, collaboratively written by PSSGID and PAWSD staff, was approved by the Town’s PSSGID Board on May 18. It’s addressed to Nathan Moore, Program Manager at CDPHE’s Water Quality Control Division, and it concludes with this comment:
Any aid you can provide by granting PAWSD and the PSSGID adequate time to research the most appropriate upgrades or replacement of our integrated wastewater systems would be greatly appreciated. We respectfully request an extension of 18 months on this timeline. Again, the District is not seeking to abandon our obligations. We are simply requesting adequate time to assure the investment we make in our treatment system provides the most comprehensive and enduring protection of public health and greatest and most permanent environmental benefit to the community and the river basins in which we live.
The “most appropriate upgrades or replacement of our integrated wastewater systems” is in reference to possibly $50 million worth of “upgrades” that CDPHE wants PAWSD to make to the Vista Wastewater Treatment Plant, within the next 10 to 15 years.
CDPHE has demanded that some of the changes — may $15 million worth — be done immediately, if not yesterday.
Pagosa wastewater customers — both PAWSD and PSSGID customers, current and future — will pay for these upgrades, unless the federal government and/or state government decide to help out.
CDPHE is a state agency, but the rules they are compelled to enforce come mainly from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It makes some kind of sense for a federal agency to oversee water quality, because the water from Colorado doesn’t stay in Colorado. Our Colorado rivers eventually flow into a dozen other states… so water quality is typically a national concern, rather than a local concern.
But we recognize that bureaucrats in Washington D.C. may have a limited understanding of how their rules are affecting our pocketbooks here in Pagosa Springs.
It’s possible that a collaborative effort by PAWSD and PSSGID — to address $50 million worth of wastewater problems — would be more affordable and more effective over the long run.
That’s the suggestion made by the PAWSD Board nearly a year ago, at a joint meeting with the PSSGID Board.
Finally, on May 18, the two districts were able to agree on a letter, suggesting that they could work together on a cooperative solution to a $50 million problem. You can download the letter here.
If CDPHE will give us a few months — maybe 18 months? — to look at “affordable” solutions?
Because $50 million doesn’t sound terribly affordable, especially when we are talking about making an upgrade to an older facility that will likely need to be replaced completely, at some point in the near future.
What might a ‘more affordable solution’ look like?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.