by Ruth Stodghill
AGUILAR — In the latest turn of events regarding the town of Aguilar’s water system, on Nov. 27 the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE) issued a Compliance Advisory notice to Mayor Donald Gonzales for the town’s failure to meet the requirements of an active Enforcement Order.
The Enforcement Order was issued by the state in May for a number of violations found during a Sept. 2022 sanitation survey, including failure to correct significant deficiencies to one of the town’s storage tanks, “Tank No. 1,” and failure to develop and/or implement a storage tank inspection plan.
As a result of the failure to fix these and other issues with its water system, the CDPHE’s Enforcement Order levied an administrative penalty of $3,822.50 and also gave the town strict deadlines for implementing corrective action to bring its water system back up to par.
Two steps forward…
Following the issuance of the CDPHE Enforcement Order, the town of Aguilar took a number of steps to improve its water system’s infrastructure, with the first major project being the construction of a new augmentation pond.
In July, Ken Torres was hired by the town as an independent contractor to manage all phases of the town’s augmentation pond/grant proposals, under the direction of Town Clerk Tyra Avila. His duties also included seeking funding for new grants, completing existing grant proposals, and making necessary contracts with government agencies regarding rules and regulations for compliance.
In October, the town secured an interim loan from COBank, ACB for $2,640,000 as part of a USDA grant program to fund construction of the new augmentation pond.
According to Avila, work on the augmentation pond project was set to begin on Dec. 4, 2023. “Ken [Torres] will be on site throughout the entire project because he is the PR for the project, the representative for on-site. He was appointed by the council,” said Avila.
Avila stated that the town of Aguilar also entered into an agreement with the City of Trinidad to pull water from the city’s east well to fill the augmentation pond once it is constructed. “That’s where we’re getting the water for the augmentation pond because it will take six million gallons of water to fill it,” said Avila. While the town of Aguilar does have access to its own well water, due to a water rights decree it can only pull 40,000 gallons of water from it annually, which wouldn’t be sufficient for filling the augmentation pond.
One step back
The Nov. 27 Compliance Advisory acknowledges the town of Aguilar has taken steps to come into compliance with the Enforcement Order. “The Department has received correspondence from the Supplier [town of Aguilar] regarding efforts towards compliance with the Order, and the Department acknowledges progress made towards satisfying compliance requirements.”
However, in several instances, these efforts came only after the state’s deadlines for doing so had passed. For example, the town had until June 7, 2023 to submit an initial response to the Enforcement Order, describing Aguilar’s plan for complying. This plan was not submitted until July 7, 30 days after the deadline to do so.
Similarly, the Enforcement Order specified an Aug. 6, 2023 deadline for the town to complete interim repairs to “Tank No. 1” as approved by the town board. However, the town did not submit photographic evidence of these completed repairs until Aug. 15, 2023, nine days after the state’s deadline.
While the town did eventually meet these two requirements, it failed to do so for two others.
The first of those requirements was an Aug. 6, 2023 deadline to submit an emergency response plan with the CDPHE. On July 7, 2023 the town of Aguilar notified CDPHE that it would complete the emergency response plan by the August deadline, but as of Nov. 27, the department had not received this from the town.
The second requirement was to submit an implementation schedule by Aug. 6, 2023 to replace or abandon “Tank No. 1.” “On July 7, 2023, the Supplier [town of Aguilar] notified the Department that they hired a contract Professional Engineer to design a replacement storage tank. On September 29, 2023, the Supplier submitted a proposed implementation schedule with only a meeting date with the Professional Engineer. To date, the Department has not received an adequate proposed implementation schedule from the Supplier.”
Thus, the town of Aguilar was 113 days past the imposed deadlines of the enforcement order for meeting both of these requirements.
The compliance advisory stated, “Failure to comply with the requirements of the Order constitutes a violation of the Order. As advised in the Order, under 25-1-114.1 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, violators of the Regulations or final Enforcement Orders issued by the Department are subject to civil or administrative penalties of up to one thousand dollars ($1000.00) per violation per day, to be imposed by the Department or a State District Court.”
According to the compliance advisory, the CDPHE is currently evaluating additional enforcement actions and penalties against Aguilar for the town’s violation of the order. The CDPHE also required that the town respond to the advisory with a proposed plan and schedule to return to compliance with the Enforcement Order, with a Dec. 27, 2023 deadline to do so.
Emergency plan filed, timeline on hold
In an update regarding the Compliance Advisory, Christa Saracco, Water Marketing & Communications Specialist with CDPHE, stated that the Water Quality Control Division received the Town of Aguilar’s emergency plan through the division’s online portal on Dec. 5, 2023, and the division was reviewing the plan to determine if it was sufficient.
Avila stated that she initially filed the emergency plan with the state before the deadline to do so, but the plan was rejected due to a formatting error. “I didn’t notice that,” Avila said.
“The drinking water portal has various automatic settings that prevent files from being uploaded if someone tries to submit an incorrect file type, a file exceeding the file size limit, and other compatibility issues. The system has specific file submission instructions and automatically informs the user of any errors,” said Saracco.
To date, the town of Aguilar has not submitted an implementation schedule to replace or abandon “Tank No. 1” to the CDPHE.
“The engineer that does the design process wants to do the timeframe for us,” said Avila, who explained that she and Torres are meeting with the engineering firm later in the month to continue to work on the project.
