Photo: San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) President Fred Schmidt points to the dead oak tree which marks the fill level for a proposed 35,000 acre-foot reservoir — large enough to serve an Archuleta County population of at least 160,000 residents. Archive Daily Post photo, circa 2008.
The San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) board of directors have scheduled a special meeting for this coming Monday, December 2 at 4pm. The agenda includes a public hearing on the District’s 2025 budget, which amounts to $197,000 for expenditures in the draft budget. $100,000 is budgeted for “Engineering/Studies/Surveys” and $31,000 is earmarked for legal fees.
A portion of the “Engineering/Studies/Surveys” is budgeted for consultants Yeh and Associates LLC, who will apparently be paid $26,000 to review past “Engineering/Studies/Surveys” and explain to SJWCD what the District knows about the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir project, and what they don’t know.
Also on the agenda: a possible executive session about an offer to purchase the Running Iron Ranch.
You can download the meeting packet here.. You can attend the meeting via Zoom.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer member of the PAWSD board of directors, but this editorial reflects only my personal opinions and not necessarily the opinions of the PAWSD board or staff.
We started Part One of this editorial series with a reference to a lengthy article in the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN, written by reporter Josh Pike.
A long story. About 3,300 words.
Mr. Pike accurately summarized a contentious meeting of the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) board of directors, on November 14. The agenda included proposals that might have addressed the PAWSD board’s frustration with recent actions by the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) board of directors, when SJWCD rejected an apparent “win-win-win-win” solution to the Dry Gulch Reservoir controversy.
The contentious part came at the meeting’s conclusion, when SJWCD board president Candace Jones got into a heated argument with PAWSD board members and with Southwestern Water Conservation District board member JR Ford.
A possible solution to the conflict — in the form of an offer by a private party to purchase the Running Iron Ranch from PAWSD and work with SJWCD towards the construction of the Dry Gulch Reservoir — had been rejected by the SJWCD board on November 7 without any attempt to negotiate with, or even communicate with, the private party.
As we’ve mentioned, the Dry Gulch Reservoir has been under discussion by SJWCD since 1989, but is no closer to being constructed than it was then… other than the fact that PAWSD and SJWCD jointly purchased the proposed site — the Running Iron Ranch — in 2008.
So we’re talking about another long story.
I’m thinking now about a private meeting I had with Fred W. Schmidt… back in maybe 2005? Mr. Schmidt was then SJWCD board president, and I believe had been its president since the District’s formation in 1987.
I was the editor of a new media outlet, the Pagosa Daily Post, and Mr. Schmidt called me up one day, requesting an interview.
He sat me down and summarized his efforts to create a reservoir in the Dry Gulch Valley.
Without this reservoir, he assured me, Pagosa Springs would never be able to grow into the thriving community we all wanted it to become. Without this reservoir we would run short of water within the next decade or so, and that would mean the end of suburban development in Archuleta County. Developers would find other communities to improve, and Pagosa would be left behind.
Mr. Schmidt was himself a developer, having recently created the Loma Linda subdivision. about four miles down Highway 84. He also had big ideas about improving downtown Pagosa, where he owned the San Juan Motel and other properties.
Water is life, of course, but access to drinking water also means profits for developers who buy up old cattle ranches and turn them into subdivisions.
After overseeing several studies that purported to show an urgent need for additional water storage in Archuleta County, SJWCD President Schmidt subsequently handled the negotiations whereby PAWSD and SJWCD collaborated to purchase the Running Iron Ranch in 2008 from the California-based Weber family, for $10.2 million. As part of the negotiations, the Weber family was allowed to lease the (now-publicly-owned) Ranch and use it for gravel mining and cattle grazing for 15 years, at a cost of just $1 per year.
Mr. Schmidt then disappeared from Pagosa, never to be seen again.
It wasn’t until after Fred W. Schmidt disappeared that I learned he had been involved in numerous lawsuits for alleged real estate fraud, including attempts to sell property that belonged to other people.
Years later, I learned that his middle name was “Weber”.
In the meantime, I had become interested in the curious and somewhat disturbing details behind the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir project, and more generally, interested in the water industry in the American West. For example, I came across the notable book by Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, which detailed numerous fraudulent and incompetent water projects sprinkled across the West.
I also researched the disturbing history of the Animas La Plata project in Durango.
A Water Boondoggle Wrapped in the Cause of Indian Rights
The Water Project that Wouldn’t Die
What Really Happened in Animas La Plata
If you have time to read these articles (especially the third one, listed above) you can get an idea why the word “boondoggle” was regularly applied, by critics, to the Animas La Plata project.
It truly boggles the mind that the Animas La Plata project actually got built, considering the amount of corruption and deception apparently involved. And you may begin to understand why the word “boondoggle” has appeared occasionally in previous Daily Post editorials about the Dry Gulch Reservoir.
It’s a long story, and we haven’t heard the end of it yet.
According to an agreement signed in 2015 by SJWCD and PAWSD, SJWCD is required to consult with PAWSD about any plans for a reservoir on the Running Iron Ranch.
To my knowledge, SJWCD has indeed consulted with PAWSD twice since 2015, but not about the Dry Gulch Reservoir project per se.
In 2021, SJWCD asked for input from the PAWSD board concerning a SJWCD plan to donate the Running Iron Ranch to the state of Colorado for a state park. The PAWSD board seemed open to the idea, but apparently wanted the PAWSD customers to be reimbursed for their annual loan payments on the property purchase. That requirement seems to have killed the deal.
The second consultation took place in 2023, when SJWCD was proposing to lease part of the Ranch to the Archuleta County government for a recreational river-front park. PAWSD nixed that idea, due in part to the fact that Archuleta County does not have a Parks Department.
But not once since 2015 — to my knowledge — has SJWCD consulted with PAWSD about its plans for the Dry Gulch Reservoir itself.
Nor was PAWSD invited to participate in a discussion, scheduled for Monday, about a $26,000 expenditure for consulting by Yeh and Associates…
Read Part Five, on Monday…