|  |
 |
|
Funny Smelling Water Facts, Part Four |
Bill Hudson | 12/4/08
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Read Part One
When Mayor Ross Aragon opened last month’s geothermal lease discussions to public questions and comments, after hearing Springs Resort attorney Jim Anesi’s version of the current state of affairs, the first person to step up to the microphone was David Smith.
Smith has been representing developer David Brown at recent Council discussions of the proposed lease — a 50-year lease of nearly all the geothermal water coming from the Town’s municipal PS-5 well — 400 GPM of the Town’s total 450 GPM water right — to the Springs Resort.
David Brown owns several prime downtown properties in the vicinity of the PS-5 well, and began showing off his own expansion plans — way back in 2004 — for the commercial area surrounding the Archuleta County Courthouse. In 2005, Brown began demolishing some older buildings in downtown Pagosa, ostensibly in preparation a much-needed “economic revitalization” of the downtown core.
At that time, the Town of Pagosa Springs had still not created the Comprehensive Plan required by its Home Rule Charter — and had only limited guidelines for downtown development. In such a planning vacuum, David Brown could conceivably have developed his property in pretty much any manner he wished. Instead, he put his ambitious plans on hold and set to work participating in the Town’s new Comp Plan — as well as a new Downtown Master Plan, much of which he funded from his own pocket.
Those two plans collected public input in dozens of community workshops over a two year period before being adopted by the Town Council.
(Curiously, the vast expanse of property owned by the Pagosa Springs Resort Company — about 30 acres just across the river from Brown’s downtown holdings — were never included in the Downtown Master Plan. When I asked Town Planner Tamra Allen why 30 acres of centrally located commercial property had been exempted from that plan, I was told that the Springs Resort area had previously developed its own, independent Master Plan. Last spring, however, the Springs Resort presented a completely new development plan, with little relationship to its previously approved Master Plan — and the new plan was approved by Town Council without a single public workshop.)
David Brown had been dealing with serious health issues for many years, however, and earlier this year announced his departure from the Pagosa Springs area — before building any of his planned downtown development.
But in October, Brown had his attorneys send a letter to the Town Council, suggesting that the exclusive lease of geothermal water to the Springs Resort was unfair to other downtown property owners — and suggesting that the Town consider leasing a portion of its water to Brown. Representative David Smith appeared before the Council around that time, and clarified Brown’s request — while also questioning the Springs Resort’s need for Town geothermal water, when according to Division of Water Resources records the Resort had considerable water rights of their own which they had never developed.
Smith raised that question again at last month’s meeting.
“My math is different from Mr. Anesi’s as far as the water rights the Springs Resort is using now, and what the [new hotel] suites are going to require. My understanding is that the Resort has rights to approximately 4 CFS (cubic feet per second) — that’s equivalent to about 1,800 GPM. I could be mistaken.”
Attorney Anesi replied, “Some of the waters they have are irrigation waters, that can’t be used in the Resort. One of the rights is in the river and can’t be used in the Resort.”
That water fact matches up with what I found in Division of Water Resources records. The Pagosa Springs Resort Company has one non-geothermal irrigation water right worth about 120 GPM.
Anesi continued, “The effective water that we have now, that we can run through our system, that the state engineer’s office will allow, is a foot and a half (750 GPM). On paper, some of those water rights you’re picking up have been abandoned — we don’t have them any more.”
Anesi did not clarify what he meant by “effective water” nor did he clarify which water rights had been abandoned and which were still active. He also didn’t explain how the state engineer could measure how much water the Resort was using or not using, since the Resort has no water meters.
“Gross-wise, I won’t argue with you,” Anesi conceded. “But the amount of water we have out of the [Great Springs] is a foot and a half.”
According to the numbers I have been able to obtain from the Division of Water Resources, the geothermal water rights held by the Pagosa Springs Resort Company — not counting its non-geothermal irrigation water — include the following:
A “waste water right” of 450 GPM (ID #2900907) from the outflow of the Town’s municipal geothermal heating system. This water right is essentially meaningless as long as the Town continues to deliver its outflow directly to the Springs Resort under a lease arrangement — because, as we discussed in Part One, the “outflow” never actually becomes waste water until the Resort itself finishes using the water…
945 GPM (ID #2905051) from the Great Pagosa Hot Spring itself…
…plus a total of 392 GPM from four additional springs or wells (ID #2900908, 2900945, 2900946, 2900947) — the locations of which I have yet to determine, but which attorney Anesi clearly represented as impractical to utilize at the present moment. Anesi did not reveal why, exactly, it might be impractical to develop those resources, nor did the Town Council ask him.
If we add up those geothermal rights, we see that the Pagosa Springs Resort Company has theoretical access to about 1,782 GPM — without any leased water from the Town.
This is about 2 ½ times the amount of water Anesi told the Council was “effectively” available to the Resort — 725 GPM.
It’s about 18 times the amount of geothermal water needed to operate the entire Spa Motel complex across the street from the Resort, according to its owner, Marsha Preuit.
This raises two interesting questions which the Town Council will no doubt want to address at some future date: Are Jim Anesi’s numbers accurate? And, is the Springs Resort uncommonly inefficient at using the community’s precious geothermal resources?
Anesi had suggested, for example, that the Resort’s new 29-room hotel would require about 250 GPM for heating purposes (during the winter months, we assume?) He also claimed that it takes 300 GPM “to heat the sidewalks and all the other things they do, snowmelt and all of that…”
For purposes of comparison, the Town of Pagosa Springs operates a municipal heating system, which provides geothermally-generated heat to about 20 public and private businesses and homes in the downtown area — including the Archuleta County jail, the Pagosa Springs Elementary School, the Pagosa Springs Junior High School, and the Pagosa Springs Intermediate school. The three schools, alone, comprise 162,000 square feet of classroom space. The municipal heating system also heats numerous sidewalks throughout the downtown commercial district.
According to Town data, the municipal geothermal system — heating who knows how many total square feet of buildings and sidewalks — normally uses about 250 GPM during the winter months. Even during the coldest parts of the winter, the system never uses the maximum allowed 450 GPM. The Town’s system uses zero water during the summer months — May to September.
Somehow, according to attorney Anesi’s numbers, it will require 550 GPM — year round — to heat a single, brand new, well-insulated hotel building, plus “the sidewalks and all the other things they do…” at the Resort.
Additionally, it requires another 521 GPM — 750,000 gallons per day — to circulate through the Resort's 18 small bathing pools, and none of that water, apparently, was part of the 550 GPM used in room heating or sidewalk melting? (Except that Resort representative Matt Mees indicated that the Resort runs its water through its sidewalks to "cool it down" enough to be used in the bathing pools.)
As noted, the Town Council expressed no curiosity about Anesi’s number claims, but I found myself somewhat skeptical — especially considering that the Resort was asking for a 50-year lease based on possibly incomplete water facts. So I headed for the podium, as Mayor Ross Aragon’s tossed the following comment in my general direction:
“Do you want to talk about stinky water, as you call it in your column?”
I wasn’t sure I had ever used the word “stinky” in any of my articles, but, yes, I did have to admit that some of the water in Pagosa Springs smelled funny.
Read Part Five... |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|