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Ballot measure

City Council cannot leave open the issue of where to move the sewer plant

Durango City Council appears poised to formulate a ballot measure asking city voters for $68 million to do something about the sewer plant – without having decided exactly what will be done with the money. It could even go before the voters like that.

This is not a recipe for success. With the central question about where to locate the sewer plant unanswered, the voters may well decide that they are in no mood to hand the city that kind of money.

That the city needs to address the sewer plant is not in question. The old plant is failing and something has to be done.

What is at issue is exactly where the sewer plant might be and how much it will cost. It appears, however, as if city officials started with the assumption that rebuilding the old plant would be the cheapest way to go and that the process of looking at alternative sites would serve only to drive critics to that preordained conclusion.

That line of thought is bolstered by the fact that the city has limited its search for alternative locations, seemingly to sites that would prove prohibitively expensive. So a remodel of the existing plant is pegged at $58 million while the two alternatives identified, near the jail and on La Posta Road, are priced at $79 million and $94 million respectively.

Not mentioned are the drawbacks of rebuilding the old plant. For starters, reconstruction would have to go on while the old plant operates. That would be costly and probably slow.

Worse, rebuilding the plant where it is would ensure that Durango will forever have a sewer plant between its busiest park and its whitewater course, adjacent to the railroad, near downtown and beside its main highway. By the time the sewer plant needs to be redone again, there really will not be anywhere else to put it.

But there is now. Besides the two pricey alternatives put forward there is one that has been little discussed: Cundiff Park. It is largely out of sight. The city already owns the land; it would essentially be swapping park land for park land. Construction could go on without interfering with the operation of the current plant. And the BMX folks would probably be happy if the city came through with a bike park elsewhere.

Moreover, the city could go to the voters with a concrete plan that would be cheaper, less visible and easier to do. Is that not worth a public discussion?



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