EDITOR’S NOTE: Tonight, Tuesday, October 20, the Pagosa Springs Town Council will consider Ordinance 1042, which proposes to create a Planned Development Overlay on 70 acres adjacent to Great West Avenue and Highway 160. You can read the pertinent documents here.
I am asking the Town Council to consider a temporary moratorium on large-scale development until our wastewater and roads infrastructure crises have been addressed. I hope anyone in favor of this speaks out in support at tonight’s meeting.
First, I want to be clear. I support housing development. I especially support reducing regulations that make it difficult for individuals and small builders to construct affordable homes.
What I oppose is a regulatory system that prices ordinary people out of building homes while large, well-funded developers can afford to navigate the same barriers, often with assistance from the Town.
And now we are considering adding major developments to a wastewater system that already faces an estimated $80 million to $100 million in infrastructure needs.
We already pump sewage miles uphill through aging infrastructure. That is a literal uphill battle. We are currently paying the price for this decision over a decade later. Now, adding hundreds of new connections without first addressing system capacity and long-term costs risks creating a permanent uphill battle for maintenance and financing.
More customers may bring more revenue, but they also bring more wastewater, greater infrastructure demands, and additional operational costs.
Who is going to pay for those costs? The workers already struggling to afford Pagosa Springs? The families trying to buy their first homes? The retirees living on fixed incomes?
Our residents and visitors have already been asked to pay additional taxes to address high-dollar infrastructure problems. They should not also be expected to subsidize the costs of major new developments.
To be clear: I am not asking the Town to stop growing. I am asking the Town to grow responsibly.
Before approving large-scale developments, demonstrate that adequate road access and wastewater capacity exists, identify the infrastructure improvements required, administration required, and establish who will pay for them.
Due to the scale of this study, I ask the Council to consider a temporary, legally appropriate moratorium on major development approvals until those questions have been answered, while preserving opportunities for smaller housing projects that existing infrastructure can support.
And I ask you to reduce unnecessary regulatory barriers that prevent ordinary residents from building affordable homes and stop steering housing towards developers and/or partners who may not understand the surroundings and infrastructure needs that put us at high risk for fires, floods, droughts, and evacuations.
We should be making it easier to build homes, not more expensive to live in the homes we already have.
Thank you.
Rachel Suh
Pagosa Springs, CO
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