Fort Garland is making plans to reinstate water sales to Costilla County residents who live outside the town limits, 45 days after cutting off water without warning to people in the high-desert hills of the San Luis Valley.
The town’s water board, after pleas from rural residents and state officials, has reversed course and decided unanimously to bring back water sales for county residents who for years have filled up tanks in Fort Garland and hauled the water back to their underground cisterns.
Water access for county residents could resume as soon as next week, ending a month and a half of anxiety as people have driven into town to take showers at the community center and counted their toilet flushes.
One member of the five-person water district board that voted Aug. 1 to end what are called “bulk water sales” resigned during the subsequent upset, which pitted town residents against the people of the Sangre de Cristo Ranches, a 44,000-acre residential area that once was the Forbes Trinchera Ranch. A group of Fort Garland residents had demanded the water board stop sharing water with rural residents after they were asked to restrict water usage until the town repaired a water pump.
Water sales will resume once the board finalizes a new waiver that customers will have to sign before purchasing water, which has been sold for 10 cents per gallon. The waiver absolves the Fort Garland water district of responsibility for any contamination that might happen to water once it leaves the filling station.
“I feel positive that it will move forward,” said Salina Pacheco, who manages the town water district.
Once the board calmed down enough to have a productive conversation about the water sales, they came to an agreement, Pacheco said. She called the whole experience a “huge wake-up call” for the town, and one that inspired four people to apply for the newly vacant seat on the water board.
“It got attention,” Pacheco said of the board vote to abruptly cut off water sales. “People just take it for granted — they are just paying their bill and not thinking about the importance of the water district. There were a lot of people in the community that did not appreciate the way that the board went with water sales.”
Bulk water sales only made up about 1% of Fort Garland’s water usage, but that detail was lost in the fighting, Pacheco said.
It started with a broken pump
The problems began when a pump in the water system broke. Fort Garland had already secured a $105,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs to fix the pump and upgrade the system, but when the pump broke in June, ahead of the planned repairs, townspeople were asked to use the “bare minimum” of water.
A small but loud group of residents showed up at the Aug. 1 water board meeting and persuaded the board, in a 3-2 vote, to cut off water sales to rural residents.
The situation was so dire for residents who rely on cisterns, which are storage tanks of water that are plumbed to homes, that officials from the state Department of Local Affairs traveled to Costilla County to help run a community meeting. Department spokesperson Shannon Gray said state officials are “closely monitoring this evolving situation” and that they had “stepped in to help facilitate” the meeting in order to answer residents’ questions.
State Sen. Cleave Simpson, a Republican from nearby Alamosa and general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, has been calling federal and state officials about the situation, as well as the owner of the Trinchera Ranch. In the past, a company provided water delivery for residents of the ranch subdivision who don’t have water wells.
He said a reversal by the board is “at least a temporary path forward,” but the area is in need of long-term solutions for water access.
This shines a light on the fact that there are places in Colorado where we have taken that for granted way too much and need to think about finding longer-term, more sustainable solutions for folks.
— Sen. Cleave Simpson, Alamosa
“There’s a sense of urgency here about dwindling water supply,” the senator said. “Our aquifers are pretty stressed. We don’t get snowpack and runoff to rebuild them like we used to.
“You just become accustomed and expect access to clean, affordable water for your household purposes. This shines a light on the fact that there are places in Colorado where we have taken that for granted way too much and need to think about finding longer-term, more sustainable solutions for folks.”
Trinchera Ranch once provided water to property owners
Part of Trinchera Ranch, formerly owned by the Forbes family, was subdivided in the 1970s and became the Sangre de Cristo Ranches neighborhood. The water augmentation plan for the ranch, which describes how it must use the groundwater, states that the subdivision can have up to 4,400 water wells, according to a copy provided to The Sun.
But wells at that elevation, where some homes are above 9,000 feet, often do not reach water, which is why the augmentation plan also states that subdivision residents could get water delivered.
It doesn’t say, however, that the ranch guarantees there will always be a water source for residents.
Still, some in the community received water deliveries until 2022, when the situation became more complicated because the water from two wells in the subdivision that were serving the community was deemed off limits. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment determined that the water needed a treatment system to make it safe to drink.
Whether Trinchera Ranch, which was purchased by billionaire conservationist Louis Bacon in 2007, could build a treatment system for the community has been a hot topic of conversation since the Fort Garland water board cut off water sales. Trinchera has only said that it is exploring how to help.
“We share our community’s concern about the difficult situation our neighbors in the Sangre de Cristo Ranches are facing and hope that it can be resolved as soon as possible,” said Andy Mountain, a spokesperson for the ranch. “Like most in our region, we are assessing the situation and whether there is anything we can do that would support them during this challenging time.”
In the short term, some Sangre de Cristo Ranches residents have purchased water from Ojo Springs Drilling, a water well drilling company that also sells bulk water from a spring on La Veta Pass between Walsenburg and Fort Garland.
The company has delivered water to cisterns in the Ranches, and opened its spring location on a couple of days in the past month to allow people to fill up water tanks on trailers or in the beds of pickup trucks. The water is not certified potable water, but it’s delicious, clean water, said Debby Blouin, owner of Ojo Springs Drilling.
“People love that water,” she said. “It comes right out of the mountain. It’s beautiful water.”
Some residents of the Sangre de Cristo Ranches, where dwellings range from mobile homes to small mansions, are expected to stick with the company even after the town of Fort Garland reinstates water sales.
For many, it’s a matter of principle. Some residents have even called on others to stop spending money in Fort Garland and instead drive a little farther to Blanca, San Luis or Alamosa.
“The majority of people are glad and thankful that they are going to have water,” said Josabeth Way, a Sangre de Cristo Ranches resident. “But there are those that want to find their own water source, do their own thing and not depend on the town.”