On March 3, the Pagosa Springs Town Council, which also sits as the board of the Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID), gave town staff direction to continue in its current relationship with Roaring Fork Engineering, while also engaging in a new separate contract to design and build a new wastewater treatment facility plant downtown.
The council also gave town staff direction to explore the possibility of declaring its sewer system “a state of emergency.”
The town first hired Roaring Fork Engineering, a Carbondale-based civil engineering firm, in 2023 to conduct a system feasibility and rate study for the community.
That work included an in-depth analysis of the PSSGID’s current system operations, including the uphill wastewater conveyance system that pumps the town’s wastewater 7 miles uphill to the Vista wastewater treatment plant, owned and operated by the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD), through a series of pump and lift stations.
Prior to this current system being installed, the PSSGID operated a lagoon-based wastewater treatment system, transitioning to the uphill conveyance system in 2015.
A Roaring Fork memo states, “This system relies on two high-horsepower pump stations operating continuously to serve the District’s needs.”
The study also included “the short and long-term challenges and financial commitments for ongoing treatment costs to PAWSD,” the memo states.
During this analysis phase, it became apparent that addressing the category 4 and 5 problems in the collection pipe system “was necessary to protect the lift stations and major pump stations for failure and overflow violations,” the memo states.
It adds, “The collection system was inundated with McCabe Creek and San Juan River water and caused lift station overflow and failure events, which needed to be addressed immediately.”
The town has since concentrated much of its financial and physical efforts to fixing these category 4 and 5 problems with the aging sewer pipe system.
However, a string of pump and lift station failures and the October 2025 flooding have left Public Works Department staff jumping back and forth from one emergency situation to another to keep the system in operation.
Public Works Director Karl Johnson, talking about the original decision to switch to the uphill conveyance system back in 2015, said that “these decisions were based on a lack of money and how can we get it built with the least amount of money possible.”
He added, “So, those decisions now are pretty catastrophic.”
Johnson explained that most of the electrical circuits for the pumps and the pumps themselves have all been replaced since they were first installed and most of the replacements have also had to be replaced.
Council member Gary Williams stated, “I think we are in an emergency. I think we should declare an emergency, and I believe we have public relations people that can help us communicate about the emergency.”
He added, “The system has failed catastrophically, and now here we are. I think we should just admit it and declare an emergency.”
He added that he has only been on the council for a few years, and he was not part of the group who made the decision to pump the town’s wastewater uphill, “but it seems like it’s only gotten worse in the last four years.”
He asked, “Do we just keep replacing pumps? Or is there something else we can do?”
Maggie McHugh, representing Roaring Fork Engineering, noted that an emergency declaration could help fast-track the “permitting process” to get the ball rolling on a new downtown treatment facility that would eventually replace the uphill conveyance system.
However, she also explained that, no matter what, it would take a few years and that, in the meantime, the town would likely still need to rely on its current uphill system.
Town Manager David Harris said, “We do know that we’ve gone through many pumps in this system … and the bottom line is that we are having that discussion internally” about switching to a different system that doesn’t pump uphill.
Harris explained that staff is “running into challenges with replacement pumps” and the overall task of maintaining the current system, but the town would need to continue to use the current system until it could stand up some sort of temporary “package plant” while it constructs a new permanent facility downtown.
Roaring Fork has identified four major project goals for the downtown treatment facility:
• Design a wastewater treatment facility which can serve the entire town population, including the ability for future expansion for either acceptance of a larger service area or PAWSD sewage.
• The wastewater treatment facility should be a community-centric facility, which includes the ability for students and community members, to interact with the site safely and learn more about wastewater treatment and operations.
• The building should be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified, integrate into the natural landscape (green roof), include renewable energy when possible and be designed by a local architect who understands the community’s infrastructure.
• The treatment processes should be progressive, forward-thinking and regulatory resilient, energy-efficient, and long-term sustainable for a small community to operate. This shall include the ability to treat wastewater to nonpotable reuse standards for localized irrigation on properties nearby.
The Roaring Fork Engineering memo also states that it has brought together “a team of Colorado Western Slope local firms to help design and permit the new facility for the town.”
It states, “This team has worked together before on major plant projects and is well suited to design to the Town’s goals. Furthermore, our four-member team can operate independently, while in sync, maximizing schedule and resources to meet the town’s schedule,” it states.
According to the memo, the team includes the following members: Roaring Fork Engineering from Carbondale, Western Water Solutions from Glenwood Springs, Browns Hill Engineering from Littleton and Big Horn Mechanical from Grand Junction.
Mayor Shari Pierce asked the council to give town staff some direction on if it should keep its current contract with Roaring Fork Engineering, while also engaging in a new contract to design and build a new wastewater treatment facility, or if the town should just modify the existing contract to add the plans for a new facility.
Council member Leonard Martinez suggested that he would prefer to “keep that [existing] contract in place with its focus” on fixing the category 4 and 5 pipe problems.
For clarification, Pierce said, “So, we’d be keeping the existing contract for the 4s and 5s and a separate contract for the new treatment plant,” with Martinez and the others agreeing.
She then asked the council if it wanted to explore “the suggestion of declaring an emergency.”
“Do we want staff to look into that to see what that would look like?” she asked.
Council member Mat deGraaf noted that he wanted to look into the emergency declaration, explaining that, from his understanding, it costs “$30,000 a month to rent one bypass pump, and we currently have four, so $120,000 a month, making it a financial emergency, if nothing else.”
The rest of the council agreed that it wants to look into the emergency declaration.
Williams then asked McHugh if she had “any experience with towns declaring emergencies for sewer failures,” with McHugh answering, “Not really.”
“Usually, it’s more natural disaster emergencies, but I would imagine that it would have a lot of the same implications. If something is failing and not working,” she said.
derek@pagosasun.com
>