• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Panel Puzzles Over State Bid for Creek Study

Posted on: Saturday, 18 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By Chris Woodka, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

Mar. 18--COLORADO SPRINGS - Members of the Fountain Creek Watershed technical advisory committee struggling to find funds to complete a decade-old study wonder why the state is launching a conflict assessment on the creek late in the game.

"My main concern is that it is tied into what the TAC is doing," said Rich Muzzy of the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments. "To be honest, some of the activities in the proposal are redundant to what we're trying to do. I think there seems to be some overlap in the issues we're trying to address."

Kathleen Reilly of the state Water Quality Division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment met with the committee Friday to explain the state's request for bids on a conflict assessment.

The proposal for the assessment was made by Dennis Ellis, state health department director, after hearing reports from his predecessor, Doug Benevento, and Water Quality Director Steve Gunderson.

"They encountered a number of people who felt they were not a part of the process and thought they should be," Reilly said.

The proposal envisions a $20,000-$30,000 conflict assessment that could lead to a long-term "stakeholder group" to discuss issues on Fountain Creek.

The watershed committee clearly believes it is already filling that role.

"Why wouldn't this have come through the TAC? Why wouldn't there have been a discussion with us?" asked Ken Sampley, Colorado Springs stormwater director. "It doesn't make sense to me. . . . Is there any way to combine this with our group through a different format?"

The state reasoned the watershed committee was looking at technical issues alone, Reilly said. The state survey will focus mainly on the issues of sewer spills into Fountain Creek from Colorado Springs and other wastewater plants. The spills have increased legal and political friction between Pueblo and Colorado Springs during the past year.

"There was a concern that the study might not have gone into depth on water quality," Reilly said.

Sampley said there were other efforts under way to look at water quality, adding that it had been a minor component of the watershed study. "The water quality task is available, but not at the level we want," Sampley said.

Muzzy pointed out water quality would add more cost to the $3 million study. For instance, the committee is seeking a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Geological Survey to study E. coli in the upper Fountain Creek basin.

David Mau of the Pueblo USGS office said the federal agency already is working with Colorado Springs on numerous water quality studies and said any new state studies should not be redundant.

The group, which began meeting in the mid-1990s and began receiving federal funds after the disastrous floods of 1999, is trying to get federal funding to finish the final stages of the project.

To date, about $1.4 million of local funds have been spent on the study, which are supposed to be matched by an equal amount through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps has contributed about $1.1 million.

"(U.S. Rep.) John Salazar (R-Colo.) has made a request for the funds and the Pueblo and Pikes Peak councils of government have supported that request," said Pueblo County Planning Director Kim Headley, chairman of the committee. "Our congressmen are well aware of the need."

URS Engineering, contractors for the study, have mapped the hydrology, or water patterns, and hydraulics, or structures, for the watershed. A study of erosion, sedimentation, streambed shifts and soils in the basin is almost complete, said project manager Bill Alspach.

The study's most important phase, identification of projects, hasn't started.

"The concern is one of trying to add everything into the study when we're having trouble to get the funding to go forward as it is," Headley said.

Some projects are hung up on completion of the study, both in Pueblo and Colorado Springs.

Pueblo Stormwater Utilities Manager Dennis Maroney has been waiting for months on a study to finalize channel stabilization along the lower reaches of Fountain Creek.

Carol Baker, of Colorado Springs Utilities, said the city has similar concerns.

"We need to do (water quality) as a second phase," Baker said. "We need to complete what we have now."

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Unknown:COSU,

Source: The Pueblo Chieftain

More News in this Category