So, have you heard the one about the guy who gets a flat tire, driving through the Colorado Rockies?
He pulls off to the side of the road, which unfortunately overlooks a steep canyon. Gets out the jack and the tire iron, and the spare tire, and pulls the metal hubcap off the flattened tire. Cranks off the six lug nuts and carefully places them into the hubcap, and then wrestles off the flat tire. But in the process, he accidentally kicks the hubcap, and the hubcap and all the lug nuts going flying down into the canyon.
There he is, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, with a spare tire — and no lug nuts.
He looks around in despair, and notices a sign on the chainlink fence running along the other side of the road.
“State Mental Institution.”
Next to the sign, clinging to the inside the chainlink fence, he sees a hospital inmate in orange coveralls, with wildly disheveled hair, and an insane look in his eyes.
“I saw what you did,” says the wild-looking inmate, with a lunatic tone in his voice.
The man with the flat tire responds. “Yep, I guess that was a pretty clumsy move. Out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“So what you do,” continues the inmate, “is you take one lug nut off each of your other three wheels, and use them to fasten on your spare tire. That will get you to the next gas station.”
The man with the flat tire realizes that this is a eminently sensible solution to what had seemed, moments before, a hopeless situation.
“Hey, that’s a great idea. I never would have thought of that myself. So, what is a person like you, doing in a mental hospital?”
The inmate responds.
“Well, I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.”
I remember back when the Pagosa Springs community was in something of an uproar over the joint decision, by the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) and the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD), to construct a $357-million-dollar water reservoir in the Dry Gulch valley. This momentous decision had been made without any voter approval.
In particular, I recall a defensive comment by one of the PAWSD board members:
“What if you turned on the water tap, and nothing came out?”
This statement could easily qualify as “alarmist.” When it was made, PAWSD was selling about 1,300 acre-feet of water per year to homes and businesses in Pagosa Springs. It was also selling about 500 acre-feet of untreated, raw water to the Pagosa Springs Golf Club and other local non-farming irrigators.
PAWSD was also losing another 500 acre-feet per year — or more — to leaking water pipes that had been poorly maintained since the 1970s.
Which is to say, almost half of the PAWSD water production was being lost, or expended on recreation and lawn-watering. Surely, we — as a community of intelligent people — would choose to modify the way PAWSD wastes water, before we would allow our kitchen taps to run dry. I mean, wouldn’t we? Take one lug nut off each of the other wheels?
We may be crazy, but we’re not stupid.
We could, if we wanted, make such an argument to Colorado’s water industry alarmists — that we’re too smart, and too inventive, and too sensible, to run out of water. The opposite viewpoint — that “Colorado is running out of water” — is based on the idea that we can’t change our behavior, so therefore, government agencies need to put us ever more deeply in debt, building more water reservoirs and water infrastructure.
On Monday evening, the San Juan Water Conservancy District held its regular bimonthly board meeting via Zoom. Only one member of the general public — Pagosa Springs SUN reporter Chris Mannara — attended the meeting, which was par for the course.
Note: I currently serve as an appointed volunteer on the San Juan Water Conservancy District, serving the taxpayers of Archuleta County. This editorial series expresses my own research and opinions, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other SJWCD Board members, nor the decisions and policies of the SJWCD Board as a whole.
The board discussion focused mainly on a new draft report written by Erin Wilson and Brenna Mefford of Lakewood-based Wilson Water Group. WWG has been tasked with helping the SJWCD board better understand the current and future water demands in Archuleta County, to facilitate a pending board decision about certain water rights.
Those particular water rights, held by SJWCD on behalf of the District’s taxpayers, refer to the future construction of a 24,000 acre-foot reservoir in the middle of what is now Bootjack Ranch, at the very southern border of Mineral County. The District also holds the water rights for an as-yet-nonexistent “West Fork Canal”.
The problem now facing the District centers on the fact that a previous SJWCD board had agreed to find a ‘new location’ for the reservoir and canal by June 2021, or else abandon the water rights. Apparently, Bootjack Ranch does not wish to become inundated by 24,000 acre-feet of water. (For comparison purposes, Village Lake, in the heart of the Pagosa Lakes subdivisions, contains about 700 acre-feet. So the once-proposed West Fork Reservoir would be more than 30 times the size of Village Lake.)
Finding a new location for a proposed 24,000 acre-foot reservoir is not the easiest task.
The 22-page draft report by WWG was shared publicly on the SJWCD website last weekend, so I feel comfortable sharing a link to that report here.
The report suggests that the most feasible location for a 24,000 acre-foot reservoir would be in the Dry Gulch valley, where PAWSD already owns the former Running Iron Ranch.
Which also happens to be the proposed site for an 11,000 acre-foot Dry Gulch Reservoir, also known as the San Juan River Headwaters Project.