Driving north on U.S. Highway 550 into the San Juan Mountains, just before crossing into San Juan County, one passes a series of sewage lagoons. In the summer, a film of fervent green plant growth covering one of them catches the eye.

The lagoons comprise one of three wastewater systems serving clusters of mountain homes along the highway. The Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement and compliance tracking website marks the three systems in red, meaning the facilities have a history of “significant/Category one noncompliance.”

Despite the noncompliance, none of the three plants have been fined in the last five years, although they have racked up a collection of “compliance advisories” – the state’s way of putting operators on notice – over that time period.

Both operators and state regulators say the systems’ statuses are less a sign of wanton environmental pollution, but are more indicative of the challenges that small utilities encounter, even in trying to meet tailored permits written for individual systems.

The three systems serve Cascade Village condos, Needles Townhomes and the Purgatory Metropolitan District.

The challenges they face are similar: materials and contractors are hard to find, and wastewater systems are expensive.

“It was around 2013 when we had to start doing all the analysis and planning for the new wastewater plant here in Purgatory,” said district manager Eric Hassle.

A decade later, the district is searching for a contractor to build the new system – which is likely to be pricey.

Edgemont Metropolitan District, a 710-unit wealthy development east of Durango, spent $8.6 million on a new, technologically advanced wastewater treatment plant.

“These small communities like Cascade, 160 people or whatever it is at, many customers cannot afford a $3 million plant,” said David Marsa, wastewater operator for both Needles and Cascade.

The standards that wastewater systems must meet – and that they violate from time to time – are intended to protect the watersheds into which the systems discharge.

Grizzly Peak Water Sales and Distribution, the utility serving Cascade Village, was bought by CitiSculpt, the same firm that will finish building out the development. The lagoon wastewater system discharges Cascade Creek.

Down the road, the Purgatory Metropolitan District also discharges into Cascade Creek. The district serves 620 sewer taps, or about 1,550 residents when at full capacity. Future development could add as many as 1,200 new taps, according to documents detailing a redesign of the wastewater system.

The Needles system discharges into groundwater connected to Elbert Creek.

The waterways both ultimately drain into the Animas River.

Unlike systems such as the Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park sewage lagoon, which regularly discharges grossly under-treated effluent into its namesake waterway, these systems are not, for the most part, wildly out of compliance with their discharge permits.

“What we’re testing and what we’re putting out into the stream is the quality of water that they want,” Marsa said of the Cascade system.

Reports filed with the state back up Marsa’s assertion. The “significant noncompliance” stems not from unhealthy levels of ammonia – the primary compound of concern in the plant’s wastewater – but from delays in scheduling. Only once in the last three years have ammonia levels exceeded the permit limit.

For Cascade and Purgatory, the “significant noncompliance” corresponds to the fact that managers are behind on installing new systems. Across the state, there is a 9% significant noncompliance rate among individual permit holders.

“Cascade is meeting the limit that the state has imposed, but it’s because the plant is only running at 25% capacity,” Marsa said. “If they ever built more, they’d have more issues. Technically, right now, we’re meeting the limits. But on paper, the plan wouldn’t meet the limits.”

According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Water Quality Control Division inspection report, engineers have been hired and are currently conducting a study to evaluate the most stable and cost-effective way to meet water quality standards.

The planning is itself the barrier that becomes a problem for smaller systems.

When CDPHE writes new permits for systems, those permits must be in compliance with an ever-changing slate of water quality standards.

“If there is a new standard that’s become more stringent than in the previous permit term, we’ll provide the permittee with a compliance schedule,” said Kelly Morgan, manager of CDPHE’s Clean Water Compliance and Enforcement Section. “That’s really intended to guide them toward meeting those future effluent limitations.”

After eight years of studies and designing, the Purgatory Metro District finally released a request for proposals last month. The Construction Journal estimated the cost of the new system to be $10 million.

The district’s manager, Hassle, said although the process has been lengthy and challenging, the state has facilitated their success.

“The state health department is really good to work with,” he said. “As long as you’re working toward the end goal and toward compliance, they’re always on your side and want to help you get into compliance.”

Of the three systems that are behind on their compliance schedules, records show that Needles is the only one that has repeated effluent limit violations. The plant’s effluent has periodically contained significantly more total coliform and total dissolved solids than allowed by state regulations.

Morgan said of the three, Needles is the only one that is not “making the type of progress that we’d like to see.”

Still, the state is caught in a precarious position. Stiff financial penalties are the only tool with which CDPHE can compel compliance. But those penalties can jeopardize the ability of metro districts and system owners, who are sometimes already strapped for cash, to build new systems that meet state standards.

“Enforcement isn’t intended to simply be punishment,” Morgan said. “The purpose of enforcement, formal enforcement, really is to compel compliance. And so in the case of Purgatory and Cascade Village, they are taking steps toward coming into compliance and so enforcement might not be the best mechanism to address that problem.”

Morgan admits there could be some water quality concerns with respect to Needles’ effluent. However, a study currently underway will determine background levels of certain contaminants that could be affecting the levels of total dissolved solids that appear in the system’s discharge.

With other engineering studies underway to address the specific needs of both the Cascade and Needles systems, their operator, Marsa, seems optimistic about their future. He too, says the state has been cooperative, noting “they understand the cost of the issue.”

And now that a request for proposal is open and will run through next month, Hassle says Purgatory Metro hopes to have a new wastewater system online by fall 2025.

rschafir@durangoherald.com