How PAWSD Customers Helped Create a Secure Water Future

The outstanding security of our community's drinking water supply has resulted from many years of careful planning by Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation, careful water conservation by our customers, and past financial support from the San Juan Water Conservancy District.

PAWSD is currently planning to sell the 667-acre Running Iron Ranch, purchased in 2008 based on reports generated by Durango-based Harris Engineering. The Ranch was purchased as the site for a proposed 35,000 acre-foot reservoir, which would have been about 21 times the size of Lake Hatcher, our primary PAWSD water source.

The purchase was a cooperative effort by PAWSD and the San Juan Water Conservancy District using a $9.2 million loan and a $1 million grant. PAWSD and SJWCD became joint tenants of the property, and PAWSD promised to repay the $9.2 million loan, plus millions of dollars more in interest payments, out of customer fees and monthly rates. SJWCD promised to begin building the reservoir by 2025 or repay their $1 million grant.

In 2009, the Dry Gulch Reservoir was projected to cost PAWSD residents and businesses $357 million.

The Harris Engineering reports that convinced a previous PAWSD Board to purchase the Ranch completely ignored actual PAWSD water demand, water conservation, and improvements to the existing PAWSD system, and instead promoted exaggerated projections about a dire future water situation.

This graph, below, compares the inflated water demand projections by Harris Engineering (red line) with actual PAWSD water sales (blue line).

In 2011, the PAWSD Board received a study from a volunteer community study group, and the Board subsequently decided that alternative water system upgrades would serve its district customers in a more cost-effective manner than a massively expensive reservoir on the Running Iron Ranch.

Thanks to an amazing water conservation effort by Archuleta County residents and businesses since 2001, PAWSD has determined that continuing to burden its water customers with a financial hardship amounting to more than $500,000 annually, for an oversized reservoir the community does not need, the best decision in 2025 is to sell the Ranch.

Click here to download the 2011 final report by the Water Supply Community Work Group.

Many of the system improvements mentioned in the 2011 report have already been made, including the Dutton Ditch Pipeline, the enlargement of Stevens Reservoir, a new pipeline along Jackson Mountain, construction of the San Juan Pumping Station, and enlargement of the Hatcher Treatment Plant. The enlargement of the Snowball Treatment plant is currently underway.

A planned, relatively simple pipeline connecting Stevens Reservoir to Lake Hatcher could triple the raw water available at the Hatcher Treatment Plant, at a low cost.

Despite a growing population in Archuleta County — about 32% growth since 2001, according to the U.S. Census — PAWSD water sales in 2022 were considerably less than in 2001, thanks to water conservation practices by our customers.

Since 2002, PAWSD has sold less than 1,500 acre-feet of treated water annually, and typically less than 1,300 acre-feet.

This amount is a tiny fraction of the raw water available to be treated for our community. PAWSD has diversion water rights — the right to divert water from area rivers and streams — that amount to more than 46,000 acre-feet annually. That's more that 30 times the amount of water we sell to residents and businesses each year. Additionally, our existing reservoirs can store more than 4,000 acre-feet, which is enough to serve District customers for more than two years, even if we received not a single drop of rain or flake of snow for two years.

SJWCD has no customers, but is joint tenant with PAWSD in ownership of the Running Iron Ranch. Its non-elected Board has committed itself to preventing the sale of the Ranch, despite stipulations in a 2016 Three-Way Agreement that specifically give PAWSD the right to sell the Ranch at its sole discretion.

The Dry Gulch Reservoir that SJWCD has been planning to construct on the Ranch property would increase the community's water storage from 4,000 acre-feet to 15,000 acre-feet... enough water storage to serve the Archuleta County community for 10 years without a drop of precipitation. SJWCD — with annual tax revenues of about $160,000 a year — is no closer to actually constructing a $357 million reservoir than they were in 2008.

PAWSD looks forward to relieving our residential and business customers of a $500,000-per-year financial burden by selling the Running Iron Ranch — the planned site for a reservoir the community doesn't need, cannot afford, and shows no sign of ever being built.

For more information about our secure water future, please download "State of the Water".