Moving Durango’s sewer plant away from Santa Rita Park is the best thing the city can do for its residents and visitors. Santa Rita Park, and the adjacent whitewater park and river trail, are certainly the city’s most popular outdoor recreation area. Unfortunately, this tremendous resource has had to be built around an unsightly and smelly sewer plant.

Think of what could be done with that land and how it could vastly improve our city’s southern entrance. Residents are already paying higher sewer bills so that we can at least remodel the existing plant. Let’s make the extra investment, do it right, and get it moved. If we don’t ,there will be a huge missed opportunity.

Contrast the proposal to move the sewer plant with the push to spend a comparable sum on a new airport terminal. Clearly, some city and county leaders feel a big airport project is warranted, but it’s difficult to see why. I’ve never seen our airport crowded – it’s known as an “easy” airport – and a new terminal will do nothing to improve the service of United or any other airline. The most pressing need at the airport is the ability for two aircraft to load or unload simultaneously, but that should be a fairly simple fix.

These two proposed projects are somewhat different in terms of funding sources, but they are related in that if money is spent on one, city residents and leaders may not have the appetite for the other. We should prioritize now, and moving the sewer plant is the better idea by a mile. The City Council and staff should get to work on it, then consider the airport proposals only after that’s done.

Jon Broholm

Durango