Fountain Creek watershed authority district looks likely

DENVER • A fragile truce between Pueblo and El Paso counties has so far lasted long enough to get a proposal to create a Fountain Creek watershed authority district past the Senate and a House committee.

SB141 was introduced only after the deal was approved last year by both counties' boards of commissioners. In El Paso County, the proposal passed 3-2.

It would create a new governmental entity to oversee Fountain Creek and address issues such as water quality, erosion and flood control.

The district's nine-member board, which would be made up of officials and appointees from both counties, will have the power to impose new fees and place mill levy increases on county ballots. Placing a tax increase on the ballot would require the support of at least seven members, and a mill levy hike would be limited to 5 mills. That could raise up to $30 million a year for new projects.

For the time being, the board will have at least $10 million a year for the next five years, which could be doubled by federal funds. The initial money comes out of the budget for the $1 billion Southern Delivery System, the pipeline from the Pueblo Reservoir that Colorado Springs Utilities plans to build.

The district would include all of Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Four smaller districts would be created within the umbrella district, which stretches from south of Pueblo, where Fountain Creek feeds into the Arkansas River, to north of Colorado Springs, where the creek begins.

The four districts would have separate powers, and new fees would likely differ between them.

The bill represents years of work and negotiations between the two counties, and has been overshadowed by a lawsuit filed against Colorado Springs by Pueblo's district attorney, Bill Thiebaut, and the Sierra Club in 2005. The suit alleged that the city wasn't doing enough to prevent sewage spills and largely left the cleanup responsibility to Pueblo.

That's just one of the sticking points that has contributed to the back-and-forth over the years, but officials are now hopeful that with the watershed authority, the fight could be over in a few months.

The district is a forum for both counties to vent their grievances, said Rep. Marsha Looper, R-Calhan, and will be able to settle fights and begin the work of both cleaning up and shoring up the creek.

"It's an extremely important piece of legislation for both our communities so we can try to heal, try to move on and address other issues," Looper said.

Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, is co-sponsoring the bill with Looper. He summed up the water quality issue pretty succinctly.

"Right now, today in Pueblo, you go along Fountain Creek, there are signs that say ‘Warning: do not go in the water.' That's how bad the water quality is," Pace said. "It is a goal to take down those signs."

Looper said one of her primary concerns is flooding.

"We've had homes, businesses that have fallen into the creek," she said.

Some of the new improvements that Looper and Pace expect are installing walls along the creek to avoid potential flooding and creating retention ponds and wetlands to help improve water quality. Also, $300,000 of the district's funding is already earmarked to look into the possibility of building a dam on the creek.

The bill was approved unanimously by the House Agriculture Committee and is expected to head to the full House. But Looper said she won't breathe easy until it's signed by the governor.

"Water bills, they're an unusual beast. Things will fly through (the Legislature), and then on second or third reading they can die," she said.