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A Bit of a Stink about Hot Water, Part Five |
Bill Hudson | 7/4/08
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Read Part One
Yesterday, in Part Four, I suggested that the legal right of the Town of Pagosa Springs to lease “waste water” from its geothermal wells — during the summer when the Town normally uses no water for its geothermal heating system — is subject to a variety of legal opinions.
 The current lease with the Springs Resort — signed in 1997 and under which the resort has been using about 180 gallons per minute (gpm) from the Town’s PS-5 well year-round — specifically states, “The Town hereby leases to the [Springs Resort] Company 200 GPM of geothermal water from the [PS-3 and PS-5] Wells released after the Town utilizes the geothermal water in its heating system… the Town leases the 200 GPM to the Company during the Town’s annual heating season, generally from late September through the end of May each year…”
The lease additionally refers to water ‘Outside the Heating Season:”
“Since the Company’s recreational use of geothermal water is a year round activity, the Company wishes to lease the 200 GPM on a year round basis. The availability of the 200 GPM during the summer may depend upon the resolution of Case N. 89CW19, District Court, Water Division 7…”
As noted in Part Four, that case was an attempt to transfer the rights belonging to the Town’s Rumbaugh Well — which included the right to use the water for “recreational bathing” as specified in the Rumbaugh decree — to the Town’s PS-3 and PS-5 Wells, whose decrees do not specify the use “recreational bathing,” but only “heating.” The Town lost that case, but decided to lease its geothermal water from its PS-5 Well to the Springs anyway, during the non-heating season, even without the Rumbaugh transfer. They did so on the advice of the Town's water attorney, Janice Sheftel.
Springs Resort representative Bill Whittington, at the Town Council’s June 19 work session, stressed that the Springs Resort also uses the water for heating.
“The Springs uses that water for heating, it doesn’t just use it for hot tubs. It does go through heat exchangers [at the Springs Resort,] it does heat the boilers and things like that. So if you use it on that side of the river to heat, or this side of the river to heat, it's still the same purpose, and that’s why you’re able to do that.”
Whittington seemed to be justifying the existing lease given the the legal limitations of the Town’s water rights, but did not explain why the Springs Resort would be running its own heating system during the summer months.
But beyond the legal issues of the Town’s right to provide “non-waste” water to the Springs Resort in the summer months, we have the scientific question: How much water can the Great Pagosa Springs Aquifer provide on a continuous basis? Does anyone know?
There can be no doubt that freely-available geothermal mineral water to a key component to Pagosa Springs’ very existence, and that no reasonable business person would intentionally to do anything to damage that valuable resource. As Whittington noted at the June 19 work session, “Certainly, the springs is all of our life blood. That’s how the town got its name, that’s what we’re representing and trying to maintain. Certainly we would not do anything that would try and hinder that, and this [proposed lease for 400gpm from the Town wells] definitely helps that.”
Looking at the way human beings have treated their environment over the past 200 years, however, it is obvious that people occasionally construct business arrangements that foul their own clean water supplies.
As we speak, all across the West, electric companies continue to operate coal-fired plants that are — unintentionally but steadily — polluting the region’s lakes with air-borne, poisonous mercury. In other words, our human quest for comfort and wealth sometimes leads us to make decisions which harm the environment — sometimes permanently. The mercury in our Western lakes, for example, will likely never be removed in our lifetimes.
We do not know the extent of the Great Pagosa Springs Aquifer, but what evidence do we have that pumping 400gpm, year-round from the Town’s wells, will not affect the aquifer’s overall health? The Springs Resort and the Town Council assert that no harm will be done. What is the evidence?
No one can see the total supply of water in the Pagosa Springs Aquifer, so the amount of water available to all users is guesswork. We really have only two significant gauges to measure the health of the aquifer: the amount of artesian pressure, and the level of the mother spring.
At the June 19 work session, Spa at Pagosa Springs owner Marcia Preuit pleaded with the Town to do further study of the aquifer before agreeing to pump nearly twice the volume of water from their downtown geothermal wells for the Springs Resort’s use.
She noted that, prior to the 1997 lease with the resort and the commencement of year-round pumping of 200gpm, the water pressure at her own three wells was 55 pounds. Since 1997, the pressure has been 17 pounds.
As Springs Resort designer Matt Mees explains it, the Great Pagosa Springs aquifer originally had no drilled wells accessing its waters, and all of the water pressure — considerable artesian water pressure — had to be relieved by the water spilling freely from the several large and small springs scattered around the large travertine meadow just south of Pagosa’s current downtown. As more and more wells were drilled into the aquifer — the Division of Water Resources lists about 27 historic wells — more “holes” were poked into the aquifer, and the artesian pressure has been gradually reduced, to a point where none of the historic springs now overflow freely, including the Great Pagosa Hot Springs.
Mees’ explanation makes a lot of sense.
But let’s consider: there are not 27 active wells in Pagosa; there are only five. The local wells currently active are Town’s PS-5 Well (PS-3 is a backup well) and the three wells at the Spa Motel, plus a leaking well, beneath Jeff Greer’s new downtown spa project on Main Street, which he will soon be using for his own spa. Greer was also the sole bidder for 35gpm from the Town’s Rumbaugh Well, which specifically has rights for “recreational bathing.”
The Spa Motel wells — which all together produce less than 100gpm, I believe — reportedly operated at 55 pounds for about 60 years. Then the Spring Resort lease began.
Using Mees’ illustration, imagine a bucket with a hole in it. When it is full, the water spurts out of the hole under high pressure. As the bucket become less full, the pressure at the hole becomes less and less. When the water drops below the hole, the pressure becomes zero.
A question to which possibly no one knows the answer is this: if the pressure at Marcia Preuit’s wells were to drop to zero, would that mean the aquifer was being slowly drained dry? If the pressure at the Giordano wells fell to less than half its original pressure when the Town started pumping 200gpm year-round, what might happen to the pressure if the Town pumps 400gpm?
At a public meeting a few months ago, Mees told the Town Council that, when the current summertime draw of 200gpm from the Town’s wells began 1997, the level of Great Pagosa Hot Spring dropped and then stabilized. Clarissa and I walk by the Great Pagosa Hot Springs nearly every day on our trip to the Post Office, and indeed the level has remained fairly constant for several years, despite large diameter pipes that poke down into the recesses of its turquoise depths.
According to Whittington, the Springs Resort is pumping water into the Great Pagosa Hot Spring. No one seems to know exactly how much water is being pumped into the Spring; there are no meters on the pipes.
I am not clear how a spring can be “stabilized” if water is being pumped into it, yet it stays at the same level. But certainly I am no expert on this subject; I have researched the subject for barely more than a week.
“In the past, the [Town’s geothermal] water was not pumped year-round, and the Spring recovered,” Marcia Preuit told the Town Council on June 19. “Once it’s turned on year-round, the Spring does not recover. I think you all need to do some more study on the recovery of the Spring.”
Is the Town Council — already struggling with a deficit budget and no doubt eager to see the Springs Resort’s planned $250 million expansion pump some needed vitality into a struggling local economy — interested in doing “more study”? Who will pay for such studies? The taxpayers? The Springs Resort?
No one? |
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