NOREEN: High and dry is no place to be
Sometime this century, the disappearing groundwater along Colorado’s Front Range is going to be a huge story.
Water providers who have done their jobs will be able to witness this slow-motion train wreck from afar, safe in the knowledge that their customers have nothing to worry about. Those who are content with pumping water out of the ground ultimately will suffer.
The Donala Water and Sanitation District, just north of Colorado Springs, can see the train coming and it is trying to get out of the way. In February, the Donala board of directors likely will schedule a May 4 election to ask its customers if it can go into debt to link up with the Colorado Springs water system.
“Our wells are doing just fine,” said Dana Duthie, who manages the Donala district. “They’re going to work for many, many more years, but that’s not forever.”
Duthie told a gathering of his ratepayers this week that the water level in some of Donala’s wells dropped as much as 21 feet in 2009, even though the district’s water use declined. He explained that when that sort of information gets out into the real estate world, property values decline, too.
The fact that there will not be much more growth in the Donala district doesn’t matter, Duthie explained, because many other water districts and private well owners in El Paso and Douglas counties continue to punch holes in the prairie at an increasing rate, reducing the water available for everyone who depends on the aquifer.
The only long-term answer that makes sense it to tap a renewable source of surface water that is available every year. The district has taken the first step, spending $5 million for the Mt. Massive Ranch near Leadville.
The deal includes 300 acre feet of water (20 percent of Donala’s annual use) that flows into the Arkansas River. Gary Bostrom, a long-time engineer for Springs Utilities, said the water could be drawn out (perhaps by the Otero Pump Station upstream of Buena Vista) and delivered to Donala — for a price to be negotiated later.
City policies have discouraged working to supply others outside the city limits, but this deal is different, because it would not involve water owned by the city.
Both entities deserve credit here: Credit Donala for long-range vision. Credit Springs Utilities for vision, also, and for beginning to change its culture enough to accommodate a neighbor.
As the groundwater disappears and it gets tougher to build water projects, this is the kind of cooperation that will be needed to sustain our community, which is more than one city.
Donala probably will ask its voters for permission to borrow $20 million. It might also ask for a five-mill property tax increase. These are significant numbers.
But what is it worth to avoid a train wreck?
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