Hundreds lose water source in Colorado’s poorest county with no notice, no warning

FORT GARLAND — In the sandy hills scattered with piñon pine and spiky yucca, hundreds of people have relied on a water supply that is so much a part of the local culture that Costilla County residents describe it as a way of life. 

Drilling for water is a pricey gamble on the high desert where many live off the grid at 7,500 to 10,000 feet of elevation. A well could cost $25,000 with no guarantee that water will spring, even after digging hundreds of feet. 

Instead, many people in the poorest county in the state have opted for cisterns, reservoirs buried underground and covered with a plastic lid or cement slab. To fill them, residents drive 20 minutes or so to town, often weekly, with tanks in their pickup trucks or on their trailers to buy water at 10 cents a gallon, or they have it delivered for an extra fee. 

It is time-consuming, tedious and steeped in routine. And in Fort Garland, the system was abruptly cut off this month — without warning or notice.

The fight over the water has pitted residents of Fort Garland who have plumbing and pay for metered water against those living outside the city limits with cisterns. The board of the Fort Garland Water and Sanitation District — which cut off water sales to rural residents Aug. 1 in a 3-2 vote that wasn’t even on its meeting agenda — has devolved into shouting matches and dysfunction. Board members have referred to disgruntled residents as an “angry mob,” and one city resident shushed the water district administrator as she explained the deficiencies of the town water system. 

People who relied on Fort Garland water to fill their cisterns have been left dry. In the heat of summer, some have gotten water from neighbors who have wells, though well-sharing is illegal. Some are driving two hours to Pueblo to buy water. Many have been getting water in the town of Blanca, where officials offered — only as an emergency solution until the end of August — to let people fill up water tanks from a hose connected to a fire hydrant.

The water crisis has forced older residents to contemplate selling their dream homes, where they had planned to retire. Others are wondering whether to scrap plans to build on their property, leaving home for showers and limiting their toilet flushes. 

Underneath it all is a deep concern about whether this is a preview of the water wars ahead as the West deals with unprecedented drought and its residents compete for a resource that is finite yet essential to life.

Water was never guaranteed

Most of those affected live in the Sangre de Cristo Ranches, a 44,000-acre residential area that once was the Forbes Trinchera Ranch. The dwellings range from multistory homes with sweeping decks facing Blanca Peak, the standout of the mountain range, to modest one-room houses and campers. 

Some residents have wells. But hundreds of people in the county of about 3,700 rely on cisterns to drink, cook and bathe. 

The situation is most dire for those who are older or have physical disabilities. Many were paying a private business, Wood & Water, to deliver water purchased from the Fort Garland filling station to their cisterns. The local couple who operated the water and firewood service in the San Luis Valley closed within days of the Fort Garland water board vote.

Amanda Ellis and Paul Branson live off a dirt road, no neighbors within sight. They run an apothecary and a wildfire mitigation business, grow vegetables and herbs, use solar power, and have a cistern buried under the sandy earth near their driveway. The water in the cistern is piped to their faucets. 

Losing their water source has caused daily stress and deep-seated worry.

When water isn’t available, finding it becomes all-consuming. “Hauling water is your water for everything — lifestyle, dishes, consumption, the whole bit,” said Branson, who for years worked in emergency management. “So not having that immediate option is of great concern. It’s stressful.” 

It’s unnerving, to the point that Branson has wondered whether cutting off water to rural residents is a step in the San Luis Valley’s hazardous mitigation plan for drought. “It seems like locking down on water availability is possibly a theme here, which begs the question, why?” he said. “Here are some things we’ll do should its ugly head start to rise and impact people, right?”

Ellis bought the house five years ago after traveling the country in a van as a freelance journalist. “I was always drawn to the mountains when I was traveling around the country and, to be honest, it was affordable,” she said. “It was off grid. It had a structure. It was away from people. The view is incredible. There’s climbing, hiking. It was somewhere I could afford and have land in Colorado.”

Having water was never a “guarantee,” she knows, but the way county residents were cut off with no warning, no time to prepare, was unethical, she said. Many residents had no idea how tenuous the water supply actually was. 

“Realtors are selling homes with (cistern) permits saying that there’s the availability to get water hauled in,” Ellis said. “It was never guaranteed. Apparently, they are not and never have been obligated to sell water outside of city limits. They’ve just done that for a very long time.”

Water pump broke, water restrictions stirred up anger

The trouble began when the pump broke in Fort Garland’s water system. 

Salina Pacheco, who is the manager of the town water district and training to become a water system operator, knew it was coming. She had been talking to the five-member water board about it for two years and had helped secure a $105,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs to upgrade the water system, which was suffering from “extreme water hammer” because water traveling through the pipes in opposite directions was colliding. 

The pump failed in June, before the system’s planned overhaul. Townspeople were asked to use the “bare minimum” of water — flush the toilets, but don’t water the lawn. 

Frustrations grew, culminating in about 10 people showing up at the Aug. 1 water board meeting to demand action. They wanted the town to stop selling what’s called “bulk water” to residents of unincorporated Costilla County. 

As the meeting intensified, with people “hollering” and cutting off each other’s sentences, board members called for a vote, even though the issue was not on their agenda, Pacheco recalled. One man held up a hand in her face as she tried to explain why she didn’t think selling water to rural residents was impacting the town’s water system. 

“These men were brought in because I had put them on a water restriction schedule,” Pacheco said in an interview. “They are upset they can’t water their lawns while people can’t have water to actually live.” 

Fort Garland uses 120 acre-feet of water per year — that’s 120 acres covered by 1 foot of water. Sales to people in cisterns account for about 1 acre feet per year, Pacheco said. Revenue for the water sales to rural residents totaled $43,000 per year, about 15% of total revenue.

Still, board president John Sanchez and two other members voted to shut down bulk water sales. Customers found out on Facebook after rural residents went to buy water and were turned away. 

Sanchez did not return a request for comment. Pacheco alleged he is trying to get the board to fire her.

Pacheco said she has brought in attorneys to train board members on meeting rules, including how to listen to public comment and not fight back or take immediate votes on issues raised by the audience. Some of the board members “have been trying to move past the craziness,” she said. “I’ve told all of the board members, ‘I need you to understand your positions.’” 

As for the board president, she said: “Somebody needs to shut him down.” 

“Hopefully we can come together as a community,” Pacheco said. “This could bring us together instead of creating them and us.” 

Water board member Anthony Neville was among the three to vote to shut off water sales. He told The Sun he did it because he understood why townspeople were angry about the water restrictions and that they “pay religiously” for their metered water. The water district’s bylaws do not say that it must sell water to people outside of Fort Garland. 

“Now that we don’t want to sell water, they think we are obligated to sell water,” Neville said. “No, we are not.” 

I get that everybody needs water. There are kids up there. 

— Anthony Neville, member of Fort Garland water board

But Neville said he would vote in the future to restore water sales to rural people. 

The water pump is fixed now. He’s hoping Sangre de Cristo Ranches residents will sign a petition that could result in another board vote and that the rest of the board “would have a heart.” 

“I get that everybody needs water,” he said. “There are kids up there.” 

When water seems scarce, long-time residents blame the newcomers

John and Debi Marks bought property in the ranches two years ago with plans to build a retirement home and live off the grid among the pines. For now, the couple in their 50s are living in a camper, parked near the markers that stake out the outline of their future home. The plan is to power with solar and grow food in a small greenhouse. 

They opted for a cistern instead of a well, bought the $500 permit and had it buried on their property. They were among the customers of Wood & Water until it went out of business.

The Marks’ plans for their next chapter were going smoothly — maybe minus the rattlesnakes seeking shade under their camper. Then their water source evaporated.

Since then, they’ve been on a disciplined mission to fill their 1,750-gallon cistern to the top and conserve water as strictly as possible. They’ve made the most of the town of Blanca’s offer of emergency water on Tuesdays and Thursdays 8 a.m. to noon. The Marks are squeezing in two trips each morning to fill the 275-gallon tank in the back of their pickup. 

They figure a full cistern is enough to last them six months in the camper. 

“We wanted to be as independent as possible, and so we searched all over the state for property that would fit our needs, and this fit the bill,” Debi Marks said. 

They love it in the valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides, but they have felt resentment from some of the longtime residents, the accusation that they showed up “unprepared” to live out here. When a necessity for life like water seems scarce, people turn on each other.

“I think a lot of what we’re dealing with are small-town politics,” John Marks said. “We all have a common need that is a valuable, sacred resource that we’re clamoring for, and we just want to be part of a community, to kind of help make things better for us all. So work with us. Please don’t work against us.”

Elaine, who did not want her full name used because she is a 79-year-old widow who lives alone on a rural dirt road, moved with her late husband to Costilla County full time about 20 years ago. Her in-laws had purchased the property in the 1970s, site unseen, from an ad in Forbes magazine, the owner of which also owned Forbes ranch. When presented with the option of drilling a well or buying water tanks and a cistern, they opted for a cistern.

“That was part of the deal with Forbes, that there would always be water available to those who bought property in the ranches, and so there was no need for us to drill a well,” she said, sitting on her deck last week under a huge blue sky. 

At first, the Forbes Ranch offered water service. Residents just had to call the ranch headquarters when their tanks were low, and a water delivery would arrive, for a fee. When the ranch sold, that arrangement ended, and Elaine and her husband started making regular trips to Fort Garland to fill their water tanks. After he died two years ago, after 60 years of marriage, a friend began helping her with the task. 

Now, for the first time since moving to her dream home where she looks at the mountains and watches the swarms of hummingbirds on her deck, she is thinking of moving away, perhaps closer to her children and grandchildren. She has started calling well drillers and was quoted from $18,000 to $25,000 with no guarantees. The wait list is about a year. 

Knowing that when the water in her tank runs out, she may not get more, has made Elaine vigilant about usage. Like many of her neighbors, she started taking showers at the community center instead of her home. 

“You count the times you flush the toilet,” she said. “I know that it takes 13 gallons to wash a load of clothes. I know that it takes 6 gallons to do my dishwasher. 

“I’ve lived a long life, and we worked hard to have this, and it’s not right at my age that I have to do all that. It’s fine if they want to say, ‘OK, we’re not going to do water anymore,’ but with no notice, no reason? To me, it’s inhumane. It’s not morally right either. Where’s your compassion? They forgot about the people.”

Solution pitched to county commissioners

Residents recently brought their concerns to a meeting of the Costilla County commissioners. The most compelling public comment came from a new resident who brought a detailed project pitch for creating a county water station that would serve all the residents who’ve been buying water in Fort Garland, Blanca and the Wildhorse Mesa community. Commissioners responded quickly, with a plan to discuss the off-grid water situation during an emergency work session next week and to take it up at their meeting in early September.

The pitch was to open a metered bulk water filling station on county property modeled after one in Cañon City and using the pre-paid account model similar to the one used by Southern Ute Utilities in southwestern Colorado. The project would cost from $120,000 to $240,000 to build, about $15,000 per year in operating costs and $25,000 per year in water costs. 

The county is likely to qualify for grants to cover much of the cost, and could net from $95,000 to $120,000 a year, according to the proposal from Sangre de Cristo Ranches resident Wesley Barnett, a former oil field worker from Texas who has dealt with water issues in the oil patch. 

The downside, though, is that it would take about a year to put it together, he said. “There’s still a gap,” Barnett said. 

A more immediate solution is a potential plan to have a private company bring a water tanker to county-owned property in Fort Garland. 

Until there is a solution, rural residents are meticulously tracking their gallons. 

The Marks stopped flowing water through their camper, instead hauling in 6 gallons at a time, so they can better track what they use. “It’s just that difficult,” John Marks said. “We’re hand-washing, filling bowls of water. We’re not sure about the future, so we’re just trying to be conservative.”