Representative Lauren Boebert announced January 23 that she secured $14.75 million for Colorado water and infrastructure projects. None of the 13 funded projects address the Arkansas Valley contamination crisis that numerous communities have lived under enforcement orders for decades.
Four weeks earlier, President Trump vetoed Boebert’s signature legislation promising a $1.3 billion solution: the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act extending 130 miles from Pueblo Reservoir to Lamar. Trump signed targeted appropriations. He rejected 100-year repayment for pipes that fail before the debt ends.
Brush received $1 million to construct a reverse osmosis treatment plant and new source well, treating high-TDS water for 5,339 residents. Prairie View Ranch Water District received $1.75 million to consolidate with Morgan County Quality Water District, preventing loss of drinking water in an area facing radioactive contamination. Castle Rock, Severance, Windsor, Eaton, Louviers, Kiowa, Yuma, and Walsh received funding for water system upgrades including new wells, ion exchange treatment for nitrate and radium, pipe replacement, and modern controls. Highway projects included US-85 widening through Sedalia and Castle Rock, Colorado Highway 71 improvements from Limon to Nebraska, and a Windsor intersection reconstruction.
Brush already operates 11 groundwater wells, 4 booster pumps, two 2.35 million-gallon storage tanks, and a complete distribution system. The $1 million adds treatment for a new well—not building infrastructure from scratch but adding filtration to what exists.
The High Country Advocate opposed the Arkansas Valley Conduit from the beginning. The pipeline would serve roughly 35,000 people. Capital costs would exceed $1.4 billion: construction, spur lines, plus individual connection fees. Wiley—population 400—expects to spend over $5 million just connecting. Local repayment alone totals $486 million over 100 years, split across nine Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District counties.
Three of those nine counties pay for water they never receive. El Paso County: 764,448 people. Fremont County: 49,575. Chaffee County: 21,124. Together, 80 percent of the district’s population. They fund Arkansas Valley infrastructure while their own water remains contaminated. The six counties receiving pipeline water total 213,000 people.
Distributed reverse osmosis costs $75 million. Per-person across the district: $72 for RO versus $1,380 for the pipeline. Repayment extends to 2135. HDPE pipes fail between 2100 and 2125. No replacement funding exists.
Two Arkansas Valley communities already proved reverse osmosis works. Las Animas installed a plant in the mid-1990s. La Junta completed a 6.6 million gallon per day facility in 2005. Bill Long, president of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, told Colorado Public Radio in 2025: “In Las Animas, we built a reverse osmosis plant. Now our drinking water is perfect, but we have a problem with the reject water from the RO plant. We can discharge that back to the river, but we can’t do that in perpetuity. The state won’t allow us to discharge that forever.”
Colorado blocks permanent discharge permits for RO concentrate. Both Las Animas and La Junta discharge RO wastewater to the Arkansas River mixed with treated sewage effluent. The state threatens permit revocation. Without permanent permits, communities cannot expand or replicate successful systems. La Junta spent $1.5 million holding its place in line for pipeline water despite having clean water from its existing RO plant.
Arkansas Valley contamination is documented. Naturally occurring radium levels run 63 times federal limits. Uranium exceeds safe standards. Agricultural chemicals compound the problem. Numerous communities live under state enforcement orders, some dating back decades. The state allows continued delivery of contaminated water while communities wait. Residents buy water from vending machines. They drink bottled water or install expensive home filtration systems.
The crisis extends beyond Arkansas Valley. Every mountain community in every historic mining district deals with heavy metal contamination. California Gulch outside Leadville required $150 million in EPA Superfund cleanup over 40 years. CJK Milling now threatens to undo that work. Chaffee, Fremont, and El Paso counties have documented water quality concerns. All three pay SECWCD taxes for Arkansas Valley water they never receive while their own water remains contaminated.
The SECWCD collects property taxes across nine counties. The same mechanism that would collect $486 million to repay the pipeline could fund distributed treatment instead. The infrastructure is scalable. The technology is proven. Colorado controls the regulatory barrier.
Boebert’s January funding demonstrates distributed treatment works while Arkansas Valley communities wait for 2035 pipeline completion. Trump’s veto recognized the Arkansas Valley Conduit as generational debt servicing a promise made in 1962, delayed 61 years while communities drank contaminated water, structured so great-grandchildren pay for pipes that fail before the debt ends.
Colorado controls the permits. The SECWCD collects the taxes. Communities have proven the technology since the 1990s. The barrier between contaminated water and clean water isn’t engineering, cost, or time. It’s a regulatory decision the state makes daily by declining to issue permits it has authority to grant.
Any candidate serious about solving Colorado’s water contamination crisis has a platform ready. Issue permanent discharge permits for RO concentrate. Fund distributed treatment through existing conservancy district mechanisms. Extend the model statewide. The barrier isn’t engineering or cost—it’s political will to challenge a regulatory structure designed to force expensive federal solutions over affordable local ones.
The question for candidates at local, state, or national level: will you issue the permits and fund the plants, or continue managing the crisis Colorado manufactured?
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