Dear Action Line: What’s up with the top-secret construction on the banks of the city reservoir? Is this in preparation for secret submarine activity? (Fun fact: There has been at least one submarine there in the past. It may have even been Action Line who broke open that undercover op.) – Captain Nemo
Dear Cap’n: Action Line did some searching for a story on the previous submarine to inhabit City Reservoir, which is located on the college mesa, just off County Road 239. Here’s how top-secret this stuff is: Any record of that incident has been completely expunged from Herald archives and the memories of three people at the Herald who were asked about it.
It’s infinitesimally possible that Action Line’s archival search was inefficient or faulty. And, even harder to imagine, that the three people contacted weren’t the right population segment to ask. It was those three people standing outside the main Herald entrance.
They seem to always be there.
Straight and tall.
Like they’re sculpted.
Weird.
Our contact at the city, Utilities Manager Justin Elkins, told us about the project at City Reservoir, also called Terminal Reservoir. (There’s also a City Reservoir up in the San Juan National Forest along the Florida River.)
Elkins explained by email that it’s a refrigeration system – so the water from your cold water tap will really be cold. “With all this demand for water throughout the 150 miles of water distribution lines throughout the city, you can imagine the refrigeration system needs to be pretty big!”
At this point, Elkins could have kept up the ruse, because Action Line was biting, just like the cutthroat trout, bass, tarpon and piranha teeming in Terminal Reservoir. But no, Action Line’s chain was being yanked. Sorry, there’s no refrigeration system coming.
So, for real, the city broke ground earlier this year on a construction project for management of residuals generated in the water treatment process, Elkins explained.
“Residuals are created in the water treatment process when small particles glob onto each other, making big particles that settle to the bottom of the water treatment plant’s basins,” he said.
These residuals have been accumulating in a “reclaim pond” on the site for many years, and that pond is now at capacity. The new Residuals Management System includes a dredge, conveyance, chemical feed to enhance dewatering, and drying pad to dewater the sludge in large geotextile tubes.
We’re getting technical and over Action Line’s head at this point (that happened early in the last paragraph), but the tubes are semi-permeable and allow water to escape while holding in the residuals, Elkins said. Water remaining from the process will be recycled to Terminal Reservoir, and the residuals will be disposed at Bondad Landfill.
The photo that accompanies this story is the large concrete pad that three geotextile tubes will sit on.
Now, before you go dredging the closet for your fishing line and illegally break in and cast a line in Terminal Reservoir, those aforementioned fish do not actually exist in that body of water. Just kraken and giant squid, and you shouldn’t mess with those.
Last week Action Line wrote about the possibility of a downtown parking garage, based tongue-in-cheekly on a 1985 Herald story, “City reveals plan for new parking garage.”
It’s pretty amazing, as the city finalizes its long-range parking master plan, how big a split there is on the issue of whether a parking garage is needed. Action Line isn’t convinced either way, but will emphasize that after 5 p.m. and on weekends, options such as the Transit Center and three small city lots along East Second Avenue become free.
One reader responded:
“It’s a shame this or something else has not been built. Lack of vision … for sure. No, there is NOT enough parking. My family and I made several trips to Durango this past summer to shop and eat and could not find parking, so we left without doing either.”
Facebook elicited a number of responses, including this from Jim Sims: “Plenty of parking always at Transit Center. … Part of me thinks people want parking right outside the store they want to shop in. Will they walk to and from a parking structure?”
Yet another response was that a parking garage should have been built where the transit center sits. And it still could be, “then close Main from College Drive to 12th Street and turn downtown into something cooler.”
And many people have come up with this idea independently: a parking garage in place of “that giant hole in the ground on the corner of East Second Avenue and Fifth Street.”
Or perhaps a hockey rink or pickleball courts should go there.
And then the comments just got weird. Action Line is purely straight-laced. By the book. Just the facts. No weirdness here.
Kenneth, what is the frequency?
Email questions and suggestions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. Or, if you lean more REM than Dan Rather, “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”
