The consulting firm hired by the city of Durango to highlight the issues and to provide the costs associated with renewing the city’s wastewater-treatment plant at a location other than Santa Rita Park has done a fine job with the sites it was given: high up in Bodo Industrial Park adjacent to the county jail, and somewhere on Koshak Mesa south of the high bridge.
To cut to the chase, in place of the estimated refurbishing cost is $58 million at the current location, an estimated $79 million at the Bodo location and an estimated $94 million at Koshak Mesa. In addition, 20-year operating and maintenance costs for pipes and pumps to the new locations add $6 million and $8 million over time.
The possible future locations in the exercise are not certain for good reasons. The Bodo tract is owned by the county, and the county has not considered whether it wants to sell, and below the High Bridge there are numerous property owners, and none of them has been approached.
At each location, it would not be surprising to have adjacent property owners protest. Sewage-treatment plants do not add to the neighborhood.
At last week’s informational meeting for the public, another suggestion came from attendees: Greatly shorten the relocating distance by instead moving the plant to the other side of the Animas River, either to the lower end of the Durango Dog Park or farther south near the Bureau of Reclamation plant that sends water to Lake Nighthorse.
That acreage – the Dog Park and where the pumping plant is sited – was a Superfund site that had its uranium mill tailings (the Dog Park) and its settling ponds (the pumping plant) removed. With deep-down pollutants covered by an overlay of dirt, it is not an acreage that has many uses. There will never be a housing development at the base of Smelter Mountain.
The consultants have made it clear that if the treatment plant is relocated not to expect all remnants of the plant to be gone from Santa Rita Park. There would be a pumping plant, and the city wants to place a couple of covered retaining tanks there that would come into use if it was necessary to shut the plant down for repairs or maintenance. So, even without the plant, Santa Rita Park would not entirely be concrete and cinder block-free.
But tasking the consultants with pricing a move across the river onto more proximate land that should be much more easily available – and has few other options – makes good sense to us.
On another significant point, a few individuals who are following the question of where the plant should be located are also claiming that the planned 4 million-gallon size – twice the current plant’s capacity – is unnecessary. They cannot imagine where that much growth within the plant’s service area can come from. Twin Buttes will eventually have plant users, and perhaps Ewing Mesa, but everything east of the High Bridge, especially growing Three Springs, uses the South Durango Sanitation District plant, which is at half or less capacity now.
Durangoans will not want to find themselves in a community with too small a sewage-treatment plant, but will twice the size of today’s plant really be necessary? That is a reasonable question.
A plant 50 percent larger rather than 100 percent, relocated not far to the other side of the Animas, might be the combination that expands Santa Rita Park while not being too hard on residents’ pocketbooks.
The plant overhaul is overdue or almost overdue, and the city wants to go to voters soon to approve this bonding expense, as the Durango City Charter requires, so work can begin. But to be able to add to the recreational ground adjacent to the whitewater park and to increase the playing fields and courts, and to add to event parking, all in a park that is constantly proving its popularity, makes it important to continue the conversation.
