Pipe Dreams: The Wait for Clean Water

DENVER — Bea Jae Viescas doesn’t drink the tap water from her Rocky Ford home. She buys bottled water for drinking, and she fills up jugs at the nearby filtration station every two weeks for cooking and filling her dogs’ water bowls. Many of her neighbors share a similar routine.

“The biggest reason that I chose to quit drinking the water here in Rocky Ford was the increase of cancer in a small town,” said Viescas, who has lived in the town for 17 years. 

"In 2010, I noticed that there was probably three or four people that I knew that had cancer. Within just a few years, there was like 12 that had cancer,” she said. “At first you kind of joke, ‘Oh, it's in the water’ like pregnancy, right? But then it's not funny anymore because it might actually be in the water.”

Communities in the Lower Arkansas River Valley, including Manzanola, May Valley and Hasty do not have safe drinking water. These communities, as well as 14 others in the area, have high levels of radionuclides — radium, uranium, radon — above the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) safe drinking water standards. Drinking high levels of radium and uranium is associated with adverse health effects including cancer and kidney problems.

For more than 60 years, leaders have tried to address the water issues in the region. The Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District formed in 1958 with the purpose of pursuing legislation and projects that would bring clear water from the Western Slope to the Arkansas River Basin.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project Act and visited Pueblo to celebrate. Congress approved $170 million for the project, which built canals, tunnels, dams and reservoirs to divert water from the western part of the state to the Eastern Plains.

But federal funding didn’t cover everything. 

The Arkansas Valley Conduit, which would bring water to 50,000 people across five counties, originally had to be paid for by the local communities, who couldn't afford it. It wasn’t until 2009 that the federal government agreed to pay for 65% of the project, leaving the local communities with a more viable path forward. The project broke ground in 2023, and the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District and the federal government’s Bureau of Reclamation have built about 12 miles of the pipeline since then.

The conduit will provide a more sustainable, accessible option for clean drinking water than current solutions like reverse osmosis and bleach treatment can offer. 

Some residents are hesitant about the pipeline and concerned about the cost of an already over-budget project falling on their shoulders.

To Bill Long, board president of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, and residents such as fourth-generation farmer Chuck Hannigan, the conduit is the expensive but necessary key to the region’s future.

“I think there's value in moving forward with it because this is communities,” Hannigan said.

“There's history here. There's a lot of good that comes out of the valley. We probably are going to see some higher costs. But we're going to be able to live here where I want to live.”