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A Bit of a Stink about Hot Water, Part One |
Bill Hudson | 6/30/08
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For thousands, perhaps millions of years, the Great Pagosa Hot Spring had been overflowing its banks and spilling mineral-rich, sulphur-smelling hot water across a large open meadow beside the San Juan River. Over the centuries, that water had left mineral deposits in the meadow that hardened into travertine, a natural chemical precipitate of carbonate compounds.
Then, in 1995, the Town of Pagosa Springs began selling the water from its geothermal well — a municipal well that pumps water from the same aquifer feeding the Great Pagosa Hot Spring and several nearby mineral spring wells — at a very modest price to the Springs Resort, then known as the Spring Inn.
As far as I can tell, the Great Pagosa Hot Spring has never overflowed since.
 Evidence shows that the water level in the mother spring has been dropping ever since the Springs Resort began using the Town’s geothermal well to pump out hot springs water year round for the Resort’s private use — and private profits. In fact, the Springs Resort has been pumping large quantities of recycled water from an undisclosed source, back into the mother spring — presumably to keep the water level from dropping further.
And now the Springs Resort wants the Town to double its delivery of hot water to the Resort. From all appearances, the majority of the seven-member Town Council is very eager to oblige.
But according to a statement made at the June 19 Town Council work session by Marcia Preuit — owner of neighboring business, The Spa Motel, also known as the Spa at Pagosa Springs — her spa’s hot water wells once operated at an artesian pressure of 55 pounds of pressure.
They now show only 17 pounds of pressure.
“Have you done any studies to see how your outflow, flowing that much, will damage the [Great Pagosa Hot Spring]? Because, in the past, the Town water was not flowing on all year round, and the Spring recovered. Once it’s turned on year round, the Spring does not recover. I think you all need to do some study on the recovery of the Spring and what it’s going to do — and possibly, you pull down the aquifer, and what it will do to [the privately owned] wells.”
Preuit’s comments were addressing the ongoing negotiations between the Town Council and the Springs Resort, to increase the Town’s delivery of municipal hot water from 200 gallons per minute (gpm) to 400gpm. Additionally, the Town had recently drafted a lease with downtown businessman Jeff Greer, to deliver the “full output” of the Town’s Rumbaugh Well to Greer’s new spa business, currently under construction on Main Street. Greer will pay a reasonable annual fee for the water, according to the draft lease.
Two fascinating questions surround the Town’s recent leases and lease negotiations, questions that to my knowledge have never been discussed openly in the press or in public meetings — though they have been the subject of at least one long-running lawsuit against the Town, a suit which has apparently been settled out of court.
Whether the Town’s new negotiations with the Springs Resort will become the subject of a future lawsuit remains to be seen.
I am the first to admit that I am no expert on water rights, municipal geothermal heating systems — or political negotiations in the climate of economic uncertainty that currently faces Pagosa Spring. So I will share what little I know, and let our readers come to their own conclusions.
First, a little history. Ute Indian lore tells us that the Great Pagosa Hot Spring came into existence during a time of illness among the tribal members. In their quest for a cure to the mysterious illness, the tribe built a huge bonfire and spent the day and night dancing around the fire and praying for relief from their affliction. When the tribe awoke in the morning, they found a spring of hot, healing water bubbling out of the ground. They named the spring “Pah-gosa” meaning “Water” (pah) “that has a strong smell” (gosa.)
Indian lore also tells us that the right to control the Great Pagosa Hot Spring led to numerous and on-going battles between the various Indian tribes — the Utes, the Navajos, and the Apaches — who have lived in the Pagosa Springs area for centuries. Curiously perhaps, there is no evidence that any of the Indian tribes ever settled in the area around the Pagosa spring; they apparently considered the site too sacred, or perhaps too dangerous, for nearby settlement.
Settlement around the Spring was left to the white man. The first written record of a white man sighting the Spring seems to be from Captain J.N. Macomb, who led a group of U.S. Topographical Engineers through the area, and who measured and sketched the Pagosa hot spring. Within a couple of decades, the town of Pagosa Springs was growing up just across the San Juan River from the Spring — at first, in support of the new Fort Lewis army encampment, and then, after the Fort was moved west n 1882, in support of local ranchers and pioneers who had moved into the area.
Tourism came a bit later.
It may be an interesting footnote that the U.S. government, at one point, had staked a claim to the area around the Great Pagosa Hot Spring, and had plans to build a convalescent hospital for veterans of the Civil War, who were now beginning to show their age and, presumably, their infirmities from the War. But the hospital plans were put on the back burner for some reason; perhaps the Army was spending its funds fighting the Indian Wars instead. How the U.S. government property surrounding the hot spring passed into private hands, I have no idea.
Fast forward to 1980. The Spa Motel has been operating its motel, swimming pool, and mineral baths a stone’s throw from the Great Pagosa Hot Springs for about 30 years, using water from three hand-dug mineral water wells. No one is sure at the time, but some probably are able to guess that the Giordano wells are pulling water from the same aquifer that feeds the mother spring — and all the other mineral water wells in town.
Across the street is the Spring Inn, a modest little motel that uses a bit of water from the Great Pagosa Hot Spring for heating its rooms in the winter but has no pools or baths of its own. Little would anyone guess it would one day become the very-well marketed and popular Springs Resort with three dozen riverside soaking pools. The Spring Inn, I assume, has been sending their lodgers across the street to the Spa Motel to “take the water.”
The Spa Motel is also popular among the local Indian tribes; many tribal members believe in the healing properties of the water, and even drink the smelly water for health purposes.
Since the mother spring has considerable artesian pressure, it consistently spills out across the surrounding meadow, and local Pagosans have dug themselves a “Hippie Dip” bathing spot, using the overflow from the Spring. The Hippie Dip is, of course, admission-free, and sometimes clothing-free as well. Some locals reportedly disapprove of the “clothing optional” character of the Hippie Dip, and restrict themselves to using the Spa Motel pools, paying a modest fee and protecting their sensibilities.
The Town of Pagosa Springs has just finished an inventory, dated 1978, of hot springs wells in the Pagosa area, and has located 27 of them surrounding the Great Pagosa Hot Spring. The inventory has been completed, presumably, because the Town has lately been considering the value of its local geothermal resource. Someone has come up with the bright idea of drilling a new geothermal well, over on the Downtown side of the river — where several wells already exist — and then using any mineral water they hit to power a municipal geothermal heating system, to heat the Town Hall on San Juan Street, the local school buildings on Pagosa Street, and other buildings in the downtown area.
What with the high price of heating fuels — following the OPEC Oil Embargo in 1973 and Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1979, crude oil prices have increased from $4 a barrel to $35 a barrel — the idea of using the town’s hot water for heating makes more sense every day.
Then the Town does a pressure test, to see if, indeed, all of the wells are really tied in to the same mother aquifer. It turns out that everyone is using the same big underground pool of hot mineral water.
The Town builds a geothermal heat exchanger, so that the mineral water can stay safely inside air-tight plumbing and can transfer its heat to a glycol plumbing system that delivers the heat to downtown buildings during the cold winter months. The mineral water itself, now considerably cooler after the heat exchange, is dumped into the San Juan River. The buildings are warmed, the lukewarm mineral water is disposed of — everyone is happy.
Well, not everyone.
Over at the Spa Motel, the Giordanos have discovered that the Town’s use of the mineral water is lowering the artesian pressure on their own Spa Motel wells. They have become concerned and have been questioning the Town’s water rights. Those water rights have been granted to the Town for “municipal use for heating purposes,” but the Giordanos water rights are senior to the Town’s — and by Colorado law, junior rights may not infringe upon senior rights.
Unfortunately for the Giordanos and for all of us, the meaning of the law appears to be increasingly dependent upon who has the best lawyer, or the biggest budget for legal fees.
There are two keys, I think, to understanding the conflicts over the Pagosa Springs mineral waters. One is to understand how water rights work in Colorado, and the other is to look at how the Town’s steady expansion of its hot water use has affected the mineral water supply in the whole downtown area.
And it’s crucial for the Town Council and the public to understand these topics before completing the current negotiations with the Springs Resort, which is planning a $250 million expansion project based on their belief, it seems, that Pagosa Springs has an endlessly abundant supply of mineral water to draw upon.
Another crucial question might be, perhaps: How far should local politicians bend Colorado state law — with their attorney’s permission of course — to help underwrite a wealthy developer’s long term resort project, for the health of Pagosa’s economic future?
Read Part Two |
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