Please bear with me, for a couple of minutes, while I recall how a small government — wanting only the best for their taxpayers — can sometimes make big mistakes. Because it does happen, occasionally.
At the south boundary of the Town of Pagosa Springs — a tax-funded corporation formed in 1891 — one can catch a lonely glimpse of Pump Station One…
…a facility that was conceived, in a vague sense, back in 2012 when Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) signed an intergovernmental agreement with the Town.
That 2012 agreement initiated a search to find a contractor willing to build a seven-mile-long sewer system that would pump the Town’s sewage uphill to the PAWSD Vista Treatment Plant. At that time, the Town’s Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID) was still treating its own sewage in three large lagoons just east of Pagosa Springs High School, adjacent to the San Juan River. The lagoon system was old, however, and occasionally violated Colorado water standards, so it really needed to be replaced.
What should be the replacement be? A new state-of-the-art treatment plant near the existing lagoons?…
…Or a pipeline that pushes sewage uphill, to an existing (and modern) treatment plant seven miles away?
In 2012, the Town Council — which also functions as the PSSGID Board of Directors — became convinced that a seven-mile-uphill pipeline was the better choice.
Although the community’s population was declining in 2012, the expectation among community leaders was for aggressive growth, far into the future.
Four years later, in 2016, the pipeline was completed and ready for an amendment to the Intergovernmental Agreement, which seemed to put all the responsibility for the pipeline’s operations and maintenance on the Town taxpayers. You can read about the resulting financial burden in this Daily Post article series: “The Town Deals with a Big Stink”. The stinky smell is only one problem, though. The more serious problem is a series of pumps that burn out as fast as they can be repaired.
Here’s Town Manager Andrea Phillips, addressing the PSSGID Board (Town Council) on Tuesday, March 1.
“We’re living on borrowed time. And so, at this point, we hate to keep purchasing pumps that are not going to get us to our final solution, being diesel pumps and things like that, but at this point it’s just a matter of avoiding a spill.”
When the pumps are working properly, the Town pumps about 250,000 gallons of sewage per day uphill to the PAWSD plant. So a “spill” would not be insignificant.
“We are at the point where [a spill] could be right around the corner. And with our ‘overflow’ vault; we’ve got eight to ten hours? And then we’re spilling into the old lagoons, which are no longer lined appropriately… and…”
My point here has to do with government decision-making. The plan to build a seven-mile pipeline was made, essentially, behind closed doors, by Town staff working with PAWSD staff and an engineering firm that had a very friendly relationship with the then-District-Manager at PAWSD. The public was never allowed to participate in the decision-making process.
Over the past several years, the Town government has been making a concerted effort to bring the public into planning and policy discussions. A new ‘public engagement’ website has invited input on a Land Use and Development Code update… also, on the plans for enlarging Yamaguchi Park… a discussion about enlarging the skate park… a discussion about the East End Multi-Modal plan… a discussion about the controversial Urban Renewal Authority… a discussion about the Watershed Enhancement Partnership… a discussion about public art…
Some of the public engagement efforts have also included in-person presentations, stakeholder interviews, and community meetings.
So I find it extremely strange that the proposed purchase of 35 vacant acres adjacent to Mountain Crossing — a proposed (and approved) development that has failed to get off the ground for the past 20 years — has been discussed only behind closed doors, and never with community stakeholders.
Even the Town Planning Commission knew nothing about the Mountain Crossing plan until Tuesday night, assuming they were listening as the Council approved a $3 million grant application to support the project.
So we can’t, in this instance, blame the Planning Commission, or the public. If this Mountain Crossing project turns out badly, we know exactly who to blame.
Well, wait a minute. I take that back. If the Town Planning Commission and the taxpayers aren’t paying attention, and don’t demand to be involved in the planning of a 35-acre development funded by and owned by the taxpayers themselves, then I guess we ought to share the blame more widely.
Of course, things are complicated. A Daily Post reader wrote to me last week, asking how the Town government can be planning a new taxpayer-subsidized subdivision at Mountain Crossing, that might nearly double the number of downtown residential sewer connections that need to be pumped uphill to the Vista Treatment Plant, when we are currently “right around the corner” from a sewage disaster.
If you have time to read our previous editorial series about the sewer pipeline, you will note that part of the problem with the pipeline might actually be that it was ‘over-sized’ for a fast-growing downtown… which subsequently turned out to be a “not-so-fast-growing” downtown. Could a big, new development cause the system to work better?
So many questions. So little chance for the public to ask them.
There’s another big issue, in this complicated mix, which has to do with “government as developer”.
I’m going to share a sad story from a nearby resort town: Salida, Colorado. The story involves some well-meaning City staff and well-meaning City Council members, who thought they could help bring additional prosperity to Salida, by allowing the municipal government to plan and finance a multi-million dollar development east of town.
Could there be some lessons for our Pagosa community, when we consider the unpleasant outcome of this well-meaning effort in a neighboring town?
On the east end of town? A couple of big parcels of vacant land, just waiting for taxpayer-funded municipal prosperity to arrive?