We, the members of Durango City Council, unanimously urge residents to vote “yes” on Ballot Question 2B, which would authorize the city to incur debt to improve our wastewater system, most significantly to upgrade and expand the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant.
The Durango Herald on Oct. 11 essentially asked residents to vote “no” as a protest against the City Council’s decision to undertake wastewater treatment plant renovations at Santa Rita Park. The Herald advocates that we should instead repurpose Cundiff Park, site of the BMX track and possibly an expanded future bicycle park.
Objections to leaving the wastewater treatment plant at the Santa Rita site primarily derive from its frequently unpleasant smell and its industrial appearance, particularly adjacent to the soccer field and Whitewater Park. Upgrade of the plant would entail state-of-the-art odor control. Redesign of the plant would also allow much better visual integration into the park that has grown up around it in the past 30 years.
Even so, if the City Council had a magic wand, we would happily whisk the plant to some other place. In the real world, we have undertaken a yearlong evaluation of alternative sites, seeking one that would be technically, financially, environmentally, socially and politically suitable. There is none!
Technically, the expanded Santa Rita sewer plant would occupy 6.5 acres, the bare minimum to accommodate Durango’s needs indefinitely into the future. With a total of 6.3 acres, Cundiff Park is too small to meet the technical requirement, particularly owing to restrictions from the floodplain and adjacent steep slope. Moreover, park access comes from a revocable easement predicated on its recreational use.
Financially, at $58 million including odor control, the Santa Rita upgrade is far cheaper and it still would triple the cost of any other project in Durango history. Leaving aside technical shortcomings and using numbers from the consultant’s report on alternative sites, we estimate the additional cost at Cundiff at about $15 million, with on-site construction, pipeline construction and odor control each contributing about $5 million. Further, the wastewater treatment plant is far from the only expensive capital project on Durango’s horizon.
Environmentally, keeping the plant at Santa Rita would reuse existing infrastructure (about $10 million worth, which is why it is less expensive than new construction anywhere else). Building in Cundiff would entail swapping one park for another, still in the river corridor, at the exorbitant cost of at least $2 million per acre added to Santa Rita Park. It also would incur the risk of spills in conveying nearly all the city’s sewage a mile down and across the Animas River.
Socially, the Cundiff Park choice would particularly hurt low-income households already struggling to survive in Durango and fixed-income seniors, either through higher sewer rates (about $20 per month) or else higher rents, in addition to increased costs of goods purchased in Durango.
Politically, the City Council has repeatedly rejected the Cundiff Park site because of the fundamental unfairness of imposing the impacts of a facility that serves everyone on a small number of residents and businesses. In particular, owners in the Rivergate complex have already indicated their willingness to take legal action to prevent being victimized financially by relocation of the sewer plant to nearby property. Choice of the Cundiff site, besides requiring a referendum to approve the unprecedented reallocation of park land, therefore would likely entail indeterminate legal costs and project delay.
Failure to pass Question 2B would impose a year’s delay in debt funding – the most equitable way for cost-sharing between current and future users – and require at least $5 million for immediate improvements at Santa Rita to maintain the plant’s operating permit, which expires in February 2018. Funding this work without debt authorization would require additional steep sewer rate increases. Choosing Cundiff – or any other alternative site – would waste this investment and also entail delay for another year or more for permitting. The need to avoid breeching other capacity constraints at Santa Rita could then prompt state regulators to demand a moratorium on building permits. Risking this disruptive outcome is unnecessary.
There is no critical recreational need for expanding Santa Rita Park. Existing aesthetic defects of the wastewater treatment plant can be addressed with design and technology. City staff and the City Council have exhaustively studied siting options and reluctantly concluded that there is no suitable alternative. Defeat of Question 2B would not alter the facts underlying this judgment.
The Durango Herald’s misguided advocacy of an unsuitable site for the sewer plant and attempt to cast the debt issue as a referendum on the plant site impose grave risks to the schedule and cost of the wastewater treatment plant upgrade.
Vote “yes” on Question 2B, so that the city can begin timely work on this essential project.
The Durango City Council consists of Mayor Dean Brookie, Mayor Pro Tem Christina Rinderle and councilors Keith Brant, Dick White and Sweetie Marbury. To reach them go to www.durangogov.org.
