The volunteer boards of two local water districts — Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation (PAWSD) and San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) — met yesterday afternoon to discuss items of mutual interest.
One item being, the 660-acre Running Iron Ranch, in the Dry Gulch Valley north of downtown, purchased by local taxpayers as a potential reservoir site. (The taxpayers did not, however, approve the purchase.)
The two districts had been collaborating on acquiring that particular property, starting in about 2003, culminating in the purchase of the ranch from the Weber family, in 2008, at a cost of $10 million. The deal struck with the family allowed them to continue leasing the 660-acre ranch for $1 a year, for up to 15 years, and to extract as much gravel as they wanted from the property during the period of the lease. The ranch property was recently appraised at $4.7 million.
Which might serve to remind us that intelligent elected and appointed leaders occasionally do some really dumb things with the taxpayers’ money.
Disclosure: I serve as a volunteer on the SJWCD board of directors, but this editorial expresses my own opinions, which are not necessarily the opinions of the board as a whole.
I consider my colleagues on the SJWCD Board to be intelligent and appropriately concerned about Archuleta County water issues, but that doesn’t mean we agree on which policies, or which investments, will best serve our community over the coming decades.
I feel the same way about our Town Council, Town Planning Commission, and Town staff — all intelligent people, and appropriately concerned, but occasionally prone to see things differently from the way I see them.
The Thursday afternoon discussion between the two water districts focused mainly on the 660-acre ranch property, which a couple of SJWCD board members believe might be suitable for a new state park, once it gets augmented by an artificial lake (water storage reservoir). At the meeting, the two boards gave preliminary approval to the idea of nominating the property to Colorado Parks & Wildlife (CPW) during the upcoming nomination process in June, but without making any type of commitment to actually follow through.
We were told that, likely, the CPW would not want to actually purchase the property and thereby allow PAWSD to pay off the $9 million loan from 2008.
So I wasn’t clear who would pay off the $9 million loan. Nor was anyone clear who would pay to build a reservoir there in the future.
But… 660 acres of property could accommodate a fair number of homes… say, for working families here in Pagosa?
Curiously enough, earlier this week the Town of Pagosa Springs submitted a grant application to the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) for $3 million, expressly to facilitate workforce housing.
The Town staff has picked out a 35-acre parcel east of downtown as the possible site for “hundreds” of workforce homes. This particular vacant parcel, adjacent to the proposed Mountain Crossing subdivision, currently has no access, no streets and no utilities. But it’s reasonably flat… and it’s on the market for $1.2 million.
The Town’s proposed property purchase is shown in purple on the map below, with the proposed Mountain Crossing commercial development site shown in blue. The existing Tractor Supply store is in the lower left corner, off Highway 84. The San Juan River curves through the upper left, with US Highway 160 running alongside.
The Strohecker asphalt plant appears in the lower right corner, along Mill Creek Road.
By my calculations, if the Town zoned the entire purple area as ‘R-22’, the new subdivision could accommodate up to 770 dwelling units. But there are many other vacant properties in the community.
For example…
Here’s a map of the Running Iron Ranch, colored in yellow. The San Juan River runs down the left side, towards downtown Pagosa, followed by Highway 160. As existing campground is shown in the lower left. To the east of the ranch is National Forest land.
The 660-acre ranch is about 20 times the size of the ‘Mountain Crossing’ parcel, and, like the ‘Mountain Crossing’ parcel, it has no streets or infrastructure. It is not ‘flat’… but unlike the ‘Mountain Crossing’ parcel, it already has access to Highway 160. It’s roughly 20 times the size, and it already belongs to the Archuleta County taxpayers.
In the dreams of the water district board members who signed the loan papers in 2008 to purchase the ranch, it was the site for a water reservoir.
In the dreams of certain water district board members, today, it could be the site for a recreational lake (which could also serves as a water reservoir) surrounded by workforce housing.
Here’s a map showing a lake about twice the size of our existing Stevens Reservoir.
The lake takes up maybe one-third of the ranch property, leaving perhaps 440 acres of vacant land. That is to say, maybe 12 times the amount of vacant land provided by the Mountain Crossing’ parcel? Many of the parcels might have lake frontage, at some point in the future.
Both of these sites — Running Iron Ranch and Mountain Crossing — have advantages, as places where a developer could be asked to construct homes for working families. The $3 million grant that the Town staff has applied for, is aimed specifically at workforce housing.
As noted, Running Iron Ranch is already public land; it already belongs to the community. It is blessed with enough water rights to someday provide dozens of lakefront properties, and many more homes with views of a future lake. In theory, a $3 million grant could be used entirely for the installation of streets and infrastructure, rather than spend buying vacant land.
But, even though the ranch is 20 times the size of the proposed Mountain Crossing parcel, it is topographically challenged. It’s also a mile further from the edge of downtown.
The Mountain Crossing parcel is nice and flat. (Which might also mean, nice and boring.) The entire 35-acre site is, reportedly, suitable for building homes. Unfortunately, it’s already next door to an operating asphalt plant… and it cannot, unfortunately, offer future lakefront properties. The parcel is currently privately owned.
I would invite our Daily Post readers to weigh in on these two prospective neighborhoods. Where would YOU want to live, if you had your druthers… and you were a working family?
Assuming the home prices were the same, in both locations?
Read Part Nine, on Monday. Have a great weekend…