Sidebar by Central Staff
Water – October 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Recently, Colorado Central Magazine reported on a controversy between the Round Mountain Water and Sanitation District, the municipal water supplier for Westcliffe and Silver Cliff, and the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District, which supplies well augmentations in our region. Upper Arkansas wanted to sell augmentation plans to landowners within the 3-mile planning area of Custer County towns, and Round Mountain objected.
Augmentation plans arrange for water to be returned into the basin to replace water used by wells. Thus allowing augmentation next to towns means that there will be private wells and septic systems going in next to towns, and that<@146>s considered problematical because it can interfere with orderly municipal planning (because towns have difficulty expanding their water and sewer systems past farmsteads with wells and septic systems). Also, rural properties in suburban neighborhoods can cause sanitation problems due to both an excess of private septic systems and livestock within well-populated areas.
Round Mountain thinks the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District is encroaching on its territory.
And as it turns out, Round Mountain is not the only water provider worried about competition from the UAWCD….