On a typical morning, I wake up around 6am, throw on some comfortable clothes, and make a pot of coffee.
I start posting articles to the Daily Post website, while the coffee brews in the kitchen.
The water for my coffee comes from the headwaters of the San Juan River… cool and clean… after treatment at the Snowball treatment plant. The primary treatment consists of the removal of soil particles and certain agricultural chemicals, and the addition of chlorine to kill microorganisms. The water has a slight chlorine odor coming out of the tap.
All in all, it’s probably some of the cleanest municipal water in the United States — not because our water district, Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation (PAWSD), is especially good at cleaning it, but because it comes to us ‘fresh’ out of the San Juan Mountains, without getting polluted by passing through other communities, or through miles of farms and ranches that leech chemicals and animal waste into the water sytem.
Most of the homes and businesses in Pagosa Springs, meanwhile, draw their drinking water from the treatment plant at Lake Hatcher, which in turns gets its water mainly from Fourmile Creek — another relatively clean water source.
All this water ‘belongs’ to the people of Colorado. It’s a publicly-owned resource, and can be used for irrigating crops without any treatment. In fact, about 95% of the water diverted in Archuleta County is untreated and used for agricultural irrigation.
This public resource can also be diverted and used for creating drinkable water, so long as PAWSD abides by the treatment requirements set down by the State of Colorado. About 5% of the diversions in Archuleta County go into producing drinking water. Because of the cost of labor, chemicals, and maintenance of the drinking water system, this treated water is much more expensive than the untreated irrigation water used by local ranches and farms.
The staff at PAWSD is fairly well compensated, compared to other business operations in the community, and we like it that way. Pagosa is becoming an ever-more expensive place to live, and our workforce needs to earn a living wage.
Our drinking water is one of the amenities that are becoming gradually more expensive.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer on the PAWSD Board of Directors, but this editorial reflects only my own personal opinions and not necessarily the opinions of the PAWSD Board as a whole.
About 35 years ago, certain Pagosa residents determined that the community would ultimately need more water reservoirs to meet the treated-water needs of a growing population. With voter approval, a second, separate water district was created with the goal of getting those future reservoirs built. This is the San Juan Water Conservancy District. SJWCD.
This editorial series will provide a few thoughts about a meeting of the San Juan Water Conservancy District board meeting on June 17, where a couple of local water-related issues were discussed at some length. The discussions touched on the cost of water.
I appreciate the convenience of turning on the tap and drawing water for my morning coffee, without having to think about it. Or worry about it.
Most of the water treated by PAWSD is not used for drinking, however. The treated water is mainly used for watering lawns and gardens, washing clothes, bathing, and flushing toilets. In reality, these residential uses don’t actually require expensive treatment with chlorine and the other steps needed to make the water safe for drinking. In fact, if you are boiling water for your coffee, you would probably be safe using untreated water from the San Juan River.
How much drinking water do we need? For the future, I mean?
And how much might it cost?
And what are the advantages of leaving water in the river?
The San Juan Water Conservancy District is also interested in these questions.
As a member of the PAWSD Board, I have an abiding interest in the decisions made by SJWCD, because the Conservancy shares, with PAWSD, the ownership of the former Running Iron Ranch. That 660-acre property was purchased in 2008, as the site for a future water reservoir.
The water rights for the San Juan River water necessary to fill this proposed reservoir were, however, contentious, and the water rights case landed in the Colorado Supreme Court — not once, but twice.
As originally envisioned by PAWSD and SJWCD, the reservoir would store about 32,000 acre-feet of water, to be treated and used by PAWSD to meet its future drinking water needs. After the Supreme Court ruled on the case, the water rights were reduced to 11,000 acre-feet … about 7 times the size of Lake Hatcher.
In a certain sense, the decisions 15 years ago by the PAWSD and SJWCD boards — to put PAWSD customers $10 million in debt for the purchase of the Running Iron Ranch, and to then announce that the future reservoir and treatment plant would cost around $357 million — those decisions are one of the main reasons why the Pagosa Daily Post exists.
Back in 2009, our local newspaper, the Pagosa Springs SUN, didn’t seem interested in discussing both sides of the ‘Dry Gulch’ issue — what some of us saw as a hugely expensive, and ultimately unnecessary, taxpayer-funded boondoggle.
Maybe the Daily Post could provide that coverage, online?
The resulting coverage of this apparent boondoggle made the Daily Post (and its editor) rather unpopular with certain community leaders. But it also provided a raison d’etre for a financially struggling media effort.
So, as I pour my second cup of coffee, I’m thinking about the June 17 meeting of the SJWCD Board, and the discussions there about our future water needs.
On July 3, the Pagosa Springs SUN provided a well-written article by Josh Pike about that SJWCD meeting, in an unbiased, journalistic fashion. The Daily Post can provide some relevant background information, and some opinions.
To round out the coverage, so to speak.