SDS: Land access needed for pipeline, 1 way or another

To deliver water, Colorado Springs Utilities will have to move tons of dirt.

Plans for the Southern Delivery System water pipeline call for the municipally owned utility to carve a 62-mile trench between Colorado Springs and the Pueblo Reservoir, a massive effort that will cost millions of dollars and affect hundreds of property owners.

So far, Utilities has paid nearly $4 million to acquire easements on 131 properties.

That’s more than one-third of the property it will need to build the pipeline.

Utilities has a $37 million land acquisition budget for phase one of the pipeline project. Some of that money will help buy the estimated 760 acres needed for the future Upper Williams Creek Reservoir about 14 miles southeast of downtown Colorado Springs. The reservoir will be built in the project’s second phase.

The pipeline will go through rolling plains, cattle ranches and backyards and even tunnel underneath Interstate 25 near the Pikes Peak International Raceway. About half will run parallel to the existing Fountain Valley Authority Pipeline easement.

“Where we can align with an existing utility corridor, we are,” Utilities spokeswoman Janet Rummel said.

To build the pipeline, Utilities must acquire mostly easements. Property owners retain the use of their land after construction. But permanent structures cannot be placed above the pipeline in case Utilities needs access for maintenance.

All the land acquisitions to date have been “consensual transactions.” About 169 parcels are left.

Utilities pledges to work cooperatively with the remaining property owners, paying them a fair price and then revegetating their land.

But officials expect holdouts.

“We remain committed to using eminent domain only as a last resort,” Rummel said in an e-mail. “However, we expect that, as we move forward with acquiring the remaining properties over the next couple of years, there may be a few property owners that we’re unable to reach agreement with.”

Cattle rancher Gary Walker may be among them.

“If somebody pulled up in the front of your house and said, ‘We’re going to carve a hole through your house,’ what would you do?” Walker said Friday.

“I just can’t roll over because they’re this great, big, huge, mega company called Colorado Springs Utilities. They have forced me into a corner,” he said.

Walker’s family had a bad experience in the 1970s when the Fountain Valley Authority Pipeline was built through their land, leaving a scar and causing soil erosion, he said. The work also caused dust storms that sickened or killed dozens of cattle, Walker said.

Walker is preparing for a fight with Colorado Springs Utilities.

“The way they’re doing things right now, we’ve already hired a condemnation attorney — well, actually three of them — out of Denver, because they’re running over us,” he said.

Rummel said Utilities has been working to identify areas on the alignment through the Walker property to do “test plots” for revegetation after the pipeline is constructed.

“This will allow us to test the revegetation process to ensure it will be effective,” she said, adding that the SDS project won’t be online until 2016, which will give Utilities enough time to address Walker’s concerns and develop “specific mitigation plans” for his property.

Rummel also said Utilities is working with the Colorado Natural Heritage program, a group recommended by Walker, on the test plots, as well as rare plant studies.

Walker contends there are three rare plant species on his property.

“They’re only known to exist in a 15-mile radius of my headquarters,” he said.

“We don’t know if it will cure cancer. We don’t know if it cures baldness — I’m hoping for that one,” he said, laughing.

For Utilities, the land acquisitions are no laughing matter.

Although Utilities plans to build the pipeline in segments rather than starting in Pueblo and working its way to Colorado Springs, the land acquisitions will affect the construction schedule. They’re working to acquire adjacent properties to speed up the building.

“It makes sense for us to start on the areas where we have a good section of land acquired, so we’re going to try to move forward with some of those sections early on in the schedule,” Rummel said. “For those sections that may take more time for the land acquisition, those will come later in the schedule.”