PHOTO: PAWSD project manager Gregg Mayo points out the route of a proposed sewer pipeline, leading — uphill — from the Town of Pagosa Springs through several semi-rural neighborhoods to the Vista Waterwater Treatment Plant. November 2011.
At the May 18 meeting of the Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID) board — the same elected officials who serve as the Pagosa Springs Town Council — we heard a conversation that I personally found encouraging.
This, in spite of some looming federal water treatment requirements that Pagosa resident will end up paying for.
I’ve been serving on the board of directors for the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) for the past two years, and hoping that both boards — PAWSD and PSSGID — could closely collaborate on wastewater issues. For the sake of the community’s ratepayers. And for the environment.
Those are two concepts that sometimes seem to be in competition. In opposition, even.
The environment vs. the ratepayers.
But they are both good excuses for governmental cooperation.
Disclosure: The opinions in this editorial are purely my own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the PAWSD Board of Directors or PAWSD staff.
First, some history.
60 years ago, the majority of Archuleta County’s population lived within the municipality known as the Town of Pagosa Springs. In its wisdom — and also in alignment with the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948 — the Town of Pagosa Springs built a municipal system for treating wastewater from its homes and businesses. That system worked reasonably well until new Colorado regulations, in the early 2000s, dictated some expensive improvements.
Rather than improve its wastewater treatment system, however, the Town went in a different direction. More about that in a moment.
50 years ago, some developers from Arizona began building out 21 square miles of suburban subdivisions called Fairfield Pagosa — and now known as Pagosa Lakes. The subdivisions were located completely outside the municipal boundaries, governed by a property owners association and the Archuleta County government.
To serve those subdivisions, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District was created, essentially by those same developers. As workers and retirees bought homes on those subdivisions, and as businesses sprouted up in the commercial areas, the wastewater treatment plant behind the Vista mobile home park was enlarged, to allow for many years of future growth. By the early 2000s, the population living outside the Town’s municipal boundaries was six times as large as the population living within the Town limits. But the Town continued to operate its own, separate sewer lagoon system… a system that was — according to ever-changing state regulations — starting to fail.
When public infrastructure begins to fail, you have to fix it somehow, and the repairs have a cost. The more people who help pay for the cost, the easier the burden on each family.
In the early 2000s, when the Town sewer system was beginning to show signs of failure, and as the state of Colorado was creating more strict regulations… the Town’s PSSGID sewer district probably could have combined with PAWSD… and maybe everyone could have cooperated, together, to build and pay for a community-wide treatment system? The cost could have been spread among 12,000 people, instead of among the 1,600 people living within the Town limits.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, the Town Council began planning to built a rather expensive treatment plant, to serve only its 1,600 residents. (And to be paid for, by only its 1,600 residents.)
What we had, then, was a certain (outdated?) mindset. The Town government did not view itself as part of a community of 12,000 people. The Town government viewed PSSGID as serving a separate little community of 1,600 people. Pagosa Springs.
Which, in hindsight, may have been the wrong way — and the most costly way — to be looking at the situation.
It appeared, to the Town Council, that the new wastewater treatment plant was going to cost maybe $5 million. Or maybe $7 million. Or more. Even if some state or federal grants were available, that would be a huge burden to put on the shoulders of only 1,600 people.
Then some folks at PAWSD came forward with a different idea. PAWSD district manager Ed Winton suggested that — instead of building a new municipal treatment plant — the Town could hire Winton’s friends from Kansas City, an engineering firm known as Bartlett & West, to design a seven-mile-long pumping system to pump the Town’s sewage uphill to the Vista Treatment Plant, and PAWSD would treat the sewage at a discounted price.
Cost of the pipeline would be maybe $4.5 million. Or so we were told.
Sounded like a good deal to the people on the Town Council. An agreement was drawn up to get the project started, with the understanding that some details would be worked out before the actual pumping commenced.
Unfortunately, a couple of things happened between the signing of the preliminary agreement and the start of the pumps. The cost ballooned to about $7 million. And PAWSD required the Town to take over the total cost of the pipeline operations, and to agree that the Town customers would help pay for any future upgrades to the Vista Treatment Plant.
The operational costs turned out to be higher than was originally thought. In fact, operating a seven-mile-long pumping system proved to be a major pain in the ass for the Town government. Rate increases have been laid on the shoulders of the PSSGID ratepayers. More are expected in the future.
About a year ago, the PAWSD Board of Directors sat down with the Town Council (the PSSGID Board) in a joint meeting, to discuss the idea of cooperating to address two concerns.
1. The Town’s struggle to operate and maintain its pumping system.
2. The new and pending Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment regulations that will place additional financial burdens on PAWSD and PSSGID customers, to the tune of maybe $50 million total.
The central question during that joint meeting:
Would the Town like to cooperate with PAWSD to jointly hire an engineering firm to analyze possible ways to address those two concerns, in a cooperative manner?
The answer from the Town, a year ago, was, “No, thanks. We will hire our own consultant.”
Nearly a year later, the Town finally hired a consultant.
But like I said, I was encouraged by the PSSGID Board meeting earlier this month. I heard indications… of a willingness to cooperate…