For decades, communities in southeastern Colorado have been waiting to get clean drinking water through the Arkansas Valley Conduit, a proposed 130-mile pipeline from the Pueblo Reservoir stretching east to the town of Las Animas.
“Our wells are no good. It’s a health problem,” explained Kelly Clodfelter, president of Bent’s Fort Water Authority in Otero County, which serves more than 327 customers. The water authority used to have deep water wells, but had to close them due to naturally occurring heavy metals in the water. “What this water conduit is going to do is they’re going to bring [potable] water.”
The project was first proposed during the Kennedy Administration to address water quality issues in the Lower Arkansas River Valley that range from high salt content and heavy metals to radionuclides, like radon and uranium, that occur naturally in the shale and are a health hazard and in violation of clean drinking water standards.
“The AVC will help us achieve compliance with EPA standards,” said Rick Jones, superintendent of May Valley Water Association, which serves around 1,500 customers in Prowers County. “Several of our water sources are out of compliance with the radionuclide levels that are currently set by the EPA.”
The other option would be to build their own treatment facility that they’d have to maintain. Several years ago, before the AVC got momentum, it was something Jones looked into. “We really don’t want to look at the alternatives now because they’re probably 10 times as much as they were [from when we last looked].”
According to Chris Woodka, senior policy and issues manager with the Southeastern Water Conservancy District, 18 of the 39 participants in the project are under enforcement orders from the state for not meeting EPA standards for radionuclides.
Several of the communities involved are located in Bent, Kiowa, Crowley and Otero counties, which have some of the lowest per capita incomes in the state, and, in turn, made financing the project difficult for decades, especially for an area of the state with a low, spread-out population.
In 2009, then-President Barack Obama signed legislation that included a cost-sharing plan for the AVC that would require a 65 percent federal-35 percent local funding split, rather than have local communities foot all the cost. That got the ball rolling.
During Trump’s first term in office, his administration invested $28 million in 2020 towards construction. More federal funds were invested during the Biden administration, and the project finally broke ground in 2023, after the state and localities also raised funding.
Trump’s decision earlier this week to veto a bill that would make it more affordable for local entities to pay their share came as a surprise to many.
In his message, Trump said the bill would “continue the failed policies of the past by forcing Federal taxpayers to bear even more of the massive costs of a local water project — a local water project that, as initially conceived, was supposed to be paid for by the localities using it. Enough is enough. My Administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding expensive and unreliable policies.”
When Clodfelter read Trump’s veto message, he was a little upset because the message seemed to say “all of Colorado is paying for it. No, they’re not. The companies are paying for it. To get on this line, we’ve already invested thousands and thousands of dollars.”
He wishes Trump officials would come to the area and talk to the small water companies and learn about the importance of these communities having quality water.
But Cheraw Mayor David Howard thinks Trump has a point. Technically, his town is still part of the AVC project, but his town decided to replace its water treatment plant with a new type of system. It cost about $1.2 million. He doesn’t think the project makes sense cost-wise.
The bill Trump vetoed would extend the repayment period from 50 to 100 years, and Howard also doesn’t think local leaders should be making that kind of commitment.
“It’s pretty hard for me to look at a 75-year loan to get to do our part for the system,” he said. “There’s not a single council member or mayor anywhere in the Arkansas Valley that’s going to live another 75 years. So they’re basically making decisions, you know, outside of their realm.”
Still, for many of the other communities and water entities, the AVC is the only economically viable plan to get clean drinking water to their customers.
Woodka said that’s why the vast majority of beneficiaries are sticking with the project, “because they keep telling me that we’re waiting for you to get down here.”
The strong bipartisan support in the state and in Congress gives many hope that Trump’s veto will not be the last word on the subject.
After all the years it took for the AVC to get started and with construction underway, Jones is optimistic that it will get completed.
“There were a lot of naysayers, and you know when they started moving dirt and putting pipe in the ground, it's like ‘wow, you know this is gonna happen’ and, and so now, yeah, everybody's kind of planning on it,” he said.
As for the veto?
“This is a little bump in the road, but it might straighten out,” Jones said.
