Once they realized they were naked, Adam and Eve tried to hide their nakedness with fig leaves.
No one was fooled.
Are we fooled about the future of Pagosa Springs?
Pagosa Springs is geographically isolated — and especially this week, when surrounded by numerous flood-related road closures. But we’re certainly not ‘economically’ isolated. Instead, we are economically ‘dependent’, to a substantial degree, on people who don’t live here. Tourists… second-home owners… out-of-town real estate developers… resort owners… corporate retail chains…
We have to wonder how those outsiders might be affected by the flood events of 2026. And we wonder how we — and they — will be affected by national and global changes. The recent political gains by Democrats in the Tuesday elections, for example?
As noted previously, the inspiration for this editorial series was a business owner’s recent comment: that surely the 2027 tourism season will not be as bad as the 2026 tourism season was.
Yesterday in Part Three, I made the (impetuous?) argument that the rise of China to its current position as the world’s number two economic power has helped generate a declining standard of living here in the U.S.
I realize that’s a pretty far-fetched idea, even if we can find online graphs that suggest the same general concept…
But almost all of my reporting here in the Daily Post over the past two decades has been focused on local issues, and how Archuleta County decision-makers have attempted to address economic and social challenges.
Of course, some of those social and economic challenges became even more of an uphill battle here in Pagosa Springs, as a result of the recent floods. It’s hard to imagine, at this point, how this little community will afford the cost of recovery without a massive infusion of federal or state funding. I assume it will be weeks before the Town and County have an accurate financial assessment of the damage to public infrastructure, and that doesn’t include the damage to private property.
And speaking of uphill battles… one of the most challenging local issues has been the sewer pipeline built by the Town of Pagosa Springs ten years ago, to pump the downtown wastewater seven miles uphill to the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Vista Treatment Plant.
We heard more about the sewer pipeline issues on Tuesday evening, at the Town Council meeting. Here’s Town Public Works Director Nick Freelen explaining that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) intends to assess penalties against the Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID) for the District’s failure to properly report sewer spills dating back to 2022 through 2025.
“Any spills that occur from this point on, will fall under the umbrella of the [Notice of Violation], so there won’t be any additional penalties assessed for any spills that happen from this point forward…”
Reading between the lines, “from this point forward” makes it sound like Mr. Freelen expects PSSGID to continue spilling raw sewage in the future. In fact, on Tuesday, he detailed multiple sewer spills currently taking place following the flood.
A written report was presented to the Council, but it had been written prior to the November 1-2 flood event:
Flow levels were high requiring PS-1 [Pump Station 1] to pump 1.7 million gallons per day during river peak flow. The flow still overwhelmed PS-1 and resulted in a spill of 750,000-1,000,000 gallons…
All spills caused by the flooding have been reported to CDPHE…
17 manhole covers were lost during the flood. Replacements have been ordered and open holes have been marked off…
“One of the issues we’re running into, is reduced supplies and limited manpower. We’ve been reaching out to CDPHE, reporting these spills as they arise, so they are aware of them. CDPHE mentioned today that they might be able to help us with manpower, equipment and materials, so we sent them a late-breaking list. That was right before this meeting.”
Mr. Freelen also stated that grit in the sewer flows is threatening to damage the pumping system.
“Probably the biggest questions now are PS-1 and PS-2. We are still limping along, but the current pump train is still taking in a lot of grit, and when you’re up at the pump stations, you can hear the grit in there…”
Here’s Utility Supervisor Lucian Brewster:
“Seems like every 30 minutes or an hour, somebody is calling us about another sewer line, broken here, broken there. So we’re trying to address the areas that are most severe first, and then stair-stepping down to the ones that are spilling the least amount…
“Last night I went home for a little bit and when I came back, the pumps were not functioning right. They would ramp up, ramp down, ramp up, ramp down…” The crew had to re-wire the three-phase power “to even get them to pump.”
“We’re pumping about 650 gallons per minute, so we’re barely keeping up. When I went down and checked before this meeting, we’re about a foot from overflowing again. [The pumps] sound like a siren going off in the building…
“I don’t know how they are running right now…”
Even in the best of times, the seven-mile pumping system had been burning out its pumps on a regular basis, and the Town has spent millions on upgrades and replacements over the past ten years.
A few of us had protested this uphill pumping system when it was first proposed, but we were not engineers.
But apparently, the engineers who designed the system were also not engineers.
And the fig leaves are not fooling anyone, at this point.
Read Part Five… on Monday…
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can't seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.