PHOTO: The Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation District offices on Lyn Avenue.
My primary work, for the past 18 years, has been as editor of the online Pagosa Daily Post. But I can’t truly define it as ‘work’.
‘Obsession’ is probably more accurate, although ‘pleasant pastime’ also might apply on occasion.
The Daily Post was originally conceived, by a group of local activists, as a ‘for-profit’ undertaking. Looking into the technological future in the summer of 2004, we imagined people — someday — getting most of their news and opinions through online media rather than through print media. We also had concerns about living in a town where people had access to only one regular source of local news: the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN, a 50-page newspaper published every Thursday.
They say ‘competition makes things better’. We thought we could become that ‘competition’.
But the Daily Post’s founding fathers and mothers quickly learned that writing truthful news and opinions can be intimidating, in a small town. Within a year, all the original staff had resigned, and our primary financial backer had pulled his support. My wife Clarissa and I tried various business models — and employee compensation schemes — to keep the website going, without much financial success.
Whatever success we had came in the form of our readers encouraging us to keep writing and sharing.
18 years later, the Daily Post is definitely a ‘not-for-profit’ effort, with only one employee. That would be, one employee (myself) — who is basically a volunteer, living on a monthly Social Security check — and some volunteer contributors.
Meanwhile, the world has indeed made a transition to online information. Not completely, of course. The Pagosa Springs SUN is still printing, and selling, a weekly print newspaper that closely resembles the SUN as it looked 50 years ago, filling its pages with traditional local advertisers, stories about local government, and several pages of high school sports news. Many small-town newspapers — and even some big-city newspapers — have closed up shop during the transition to online news; somehow, the SUN has been able to stay afloat.
The Daily Post has successfully avoided coverage of high school sports, and pages full of business advertising. My primary goal has been to keep an eye on local government, and to ‘speak truth to power’ in my own small way. Especially, I’ve been writing about the Town government, the County government, and our two water districts. That’s kept me amused, and busy.
For the past eight years or so, the Pagosa Springs Town Council has been holding an annual summer ‘retreat’.
Not necessarily the kind of ‘retreat’ where you gather in a luxury hotel somewhere near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for several days of intense brainstorming and goal-setting… but rather, the more modest kind of ‘retreat’ where you sit around a big table at Town Hall, and talk for three or four hours, in a general way, about goals, policies and governance.
You can review the Council’s ‘Goals & Objectives for 2022-2023’ here. They were adopted last July.
I sometimes wonder what our town would be like, if the Council actually went on a retreat to Jackson Hole every year.
The Archuleta School District has been sending its school board members to Colorado Springs every December, to an annual meeting of the Colorado Association of School Boards at the luxurious Broadmoor Hotel… but I’m not sure if the School Board held a ‘retreat’ per se this year… to set goals. If they did, I didn’t hear about it.
Our Archuleta Board of County Commissioners just returned from the Colorado Counties Inc. annual Winter Conference. (As opposed to the annual Summer Conference.) But there again, I don’t recall the BOCC holding a ‘retreat’ this past year.
How many of us, who are not in government jobs, held some kind of annual ‘retreat’ to plan for the coming year? Not many, I bet. I know the Daily Post didn’t host a retreat. (Maybe we should have?)
But many of us have nevertheless set ‘goals’ for the coming year. Some might refer to them as ‘New Year’s Resolutions’, but that phrase implies “things I will try to do differently this year, for my own personal benefit.” The ‘Goals’ that our local governments and citizen activists tackle generally affect a larger number of people
One of the top priority goals chosen by the Town Council last July, to be accomplished (if possible) in 2022 or 2023, concerned the Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District:
Stabilize the pumping system, continue maintenance and upgrade efforts and explore long-term community solutions with the goal of the Town getting out of the Sanitation business.
It’s fairly common for towns and cities to operate water and wastewater systems. In Denver, for example, the Wastewater Management Division is part of the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, maintaining more than 1,500 miles of sanitary sewer lines and pipes. As another example, sanitation in downtown Durango is handled by the city’s Department of Public Works.
Even more common, perhaps, are ‘special districts’ with independent governing boards, such as Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) and the South Durango Sanitation District (SDSD), which serves the southern part of Durango, including Three Springs and Grandview.
Disclosure: I currently serve on the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District Board of Directors, but this commentary reflects only my personal opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of the PAWSD Board as a whole.
Back in 2008, the Town’s municipal wastewater district, the Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID), had ambitious plans to build a shiny new sewer treatment facility near the Pagosa Springs High School, partly to address problems with the existing lagoon treatment system, and partly because a half dozen new subdivisions were seeking annexation and future sewer service.
By 2010, all those proposed subdivisions had been mothballed, presumably to wait out the Great Recession. (And still waiting…)
Meanwhile, some geniuses at PAWSD (I use the term lightly) dreamed up an alternative plan, to cooperatively build a 7-mile-long, uphill, sewer pipeline and treat the downtown’s wastewater at the Vista Treatment Plant located near Lake Forest.
The resulting IGA (intergovernmental agreement) was unanimously approved by the Town Council, and by three of the five PAWSD board members. The controversial pipeline came in at about $3 million over the original estimated cost.
And thus began the Town’s heartburn, as the pumps tasked with moving 250,000 gallons per day uphill failed on a consistent basis, one after the other.
At one point earlier this year, the Town had only a couple of pumps still working, and was facing continual challenges getting replacement parts. Not only were the pumps wearing out; the staff was also getting worn out. A new consulting engineer, brought on board to analyze the issues, seems to have figured out some of the problems that were causing the pumps to fail… but in July, the Town Council made it their Number One Goal, to “get out of the Sanitation business.”
Presumably, ‘getting out’ would require someone else to step up and take over the business.
Like, for example, PAWSD?
From the Council’s 2022-2023 ‘Goals & Objectives’ document:
- Complete pump replacement project and stabilize system (summer/fall 2022)
- Collaborate with PAWSD on the possible merger and explore new treatment plant options (ongoing)
- Engage engineer to assist with analysis of options for PSSGID (by spring 2023)
- Continue to pursue funding opportunities through state and federal sources (ongoing)
- Continue to invest in upgrading collection lines and equipment (annual budget process, ongoing)
At least some of the current Town Council, and at least some of the current PAWSD board, are interested in exploring what a merger between PSSGID and PAWSD might look like… understanding that it would be a complicated merger. But possibly beneficial to the community as a whole.
PAWSD is currently looking at an expensive upgrade to its Vista Wastewater Treatment Plant, to meet regulations promulgated by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Estimates for the cost are in the $20 million ballpark, and since PSSGID is now PAWSD’s biggest wastewater customer, some of the cost would fall on the shoulders of downtown residents.
Would it make sense to collaborate on a shared solution… a solution that might get the Town out of the sanitation business, while also ultimately reducing the cost of future upgrades? PAWSD has placed some money in its 2023 budget to look into that very question.
The Town, however, did not earmark any money for sanitation studies in 2023, despite of the fact that the Council’s number one ‘Goal’ for 2022-2023 includes this language:
“Collaborate with PAWSD on the possible merger and explore new treatment plant options…”
Speaking as one PAWSD board member, I would love to see some kind of collaboration develop in 2023.