Carl Schueler, manager of the county’s long range planning division, led a special stakeholders meeting on behalf of the Falcon/Peyton Small Area Master Plan Advisory Committee Aug. 29 for the purpose of gathering information on water and wastewater treatment.Falcon area stakeholders Kip Peterson, general manager of the Cherokee Metropolitan District, and Kathy Hare, president of the Upper Black Squirrel Creek Groundwater Management District, presented at the meeting.Aaron Briggs, community planner for HB&A (planning consultant for the committee), and Falcon/Peyton planning committee member Sandra Martin, president of Protect Our Wells, and Julia Murphy, a hydrogeologist, also attended the meeting.”The Cherokee district currently has a series of wells north of Ellicott Highway and 12 wells south of Ellicott Highway,” Peterson said. The Cherokee district has sold 350-acre feet of water to the Woodmen Hills development, which has only used 60-acre feet to date. Peterson said each house uses 150 to 175 gallons of water per day.Peterson said the Cherokee district currently provides about half the wastewater treatment capacity in the Falcon/Peyton planning area. The Cherokee district will break ground on a new wastewater treatment plant in December. The new plant should be operating by the first quarter of 2010, he said.”Our plan is expandable,” Peterson said. “We can generate more [wastewater treatment] capacity, but that doesn’t do any good for water in the northern part of the district.” He also said the district has no plans to pump non-potable water to the northern part of the district.”Water quality issues have forced us to start the new facility,” he said. The old plant is not in an ideal location to expand.”Peterson and Hare agreed that the other wastewater treatment facility at Paint Brush Hills will not meet the state’s new water-quality standards.”The one thing this area needs is wastewater treatment capacity,” Hare said. “Wastewater treatment and recharge are essential, and then let the soil do the rest of the work.”The Cherokee district also is working on a recharge facility that is 60 percent complete, Peterson said, but they won’t be able to use it until the new wastewater treatment plant is up and running. The Upper Black Squirrel district disputes the location of the pipe, Peterson said, adding that “we have much more in common with the goals of the Upper Black Squirrel district than we’ve ever had, and we share their concern about water quality.”Peterson said the Cherokee district is looking at providing a full recharge facility in the northern part of the district – perhaps in the area of the Santa Fe Springs development. “The district recognizes the need for central sewer systems. Water and wastewater treatment go hand-in-hand,” he said.Hare said the 1992 Falcon/Peyton Small Area Master Plan recommended that the county discourage 2.5-acre developments that rely on septic systems. She referred to the 2003 Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Water Quality study, which states that “septic tank effluent is the most common water quality problem in rural areas.” The study also estimates an increase in the number of septic systems in El Paso County from 300 in 1990 to 2,000 in 2000. Many of the new septic systems are in the planning area.Hare pointed out many areas in the 1992 master plan that need to be updated. The number of domestic wells in the Upper Black Squirrel district has increased to 8,000, and the UBS district now limits the use of domestic wells for irrigation purposes to no more than one-half acre instead of the state limit of one acre, Hare said.”More information is available now about the Arapahoe aquifer,” Hare said. “Colorado Springs Utilities has determined it’s very spotty in the Falcon area as to what can be pumped out.”Hare suggested that a statement of well owner responsibility be added to the master plan.”The Upper Black Squirrel district gets numerous calls every week from people seeking reassurance they will have quality and quantity of water,” she said. “People buying a lot with an individual well and a septic system need to know they are responsible for monitoring water quality and ensuring water supply. People seem to think they are entitled to quality and quantity of water, but this is the responsibility of the owner.””It’s not good land use planning to have the water quality and quantity of individual wells compromised,” Schueler said.Murphy said the alluvial aquifers are more susceptible to surface contamination from commercial sources such as gas stations and auto repair shops and asked if the master plan would include any land use restrictions based on usage above an alluvial aquifer.Schueler said the county commissioners are likely to allow areas that are already subdivided to fill in and specify mitigation instead of restricting certain land uses. In areas that are not developed, restricting that kind of land use is perfectly legitimate, he added.In a follow-up interview, Martin said that, although she understands many of the Falcon/Peyton planning committee members work and couldn’t attend, she was concerned that other advisory committee members were absent. The public Web site, www.hbaa.com/Falcon-Peyton-MP, lists regular advisory committee meetings, but does not list the time and location of the stakeholder meetings, which may have led to some miscommunication.The next meeting of the advisory committee is Sept. 26 at the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department in Colorado Springs at 3 p.m.
