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> The fight over the water has pitted residents of Fort Garland who have plumbing and pay for metered water against those living outside the city limits with ci

> The fight over the water has pitted residents of Fort Garland who have plumbing and pay for metered water against those living outside the city limits with cisterns. The board of the Fort Garland Water and Sanitation District — which cut off water sales to rural residents Aug. 1 in a 3-2 vote that wasn’t even on its meeting agenda — has devolved into shouting matches and dysfunction. I don't begrudge people who choose to live outside of municipalities in order to avoid taxes, but it's hard to empathize with them when the municipality they're not paying into makes a decision on behalf of their own voters/taxpayers. Hopefully the county/private sector resolves it soon.

culverv 1y ago
I can help a lot with this situation… My product “Sink Twice” was specifically designed for water crisis and helps both on and off grid. It takes about 5 minutes to install and saves tremendous amounts of water for more than a decade… and it is made in Dacono, Colorado.
Kapura 1y ago
they do pay into it, every time they buy the water. exchanging currency for valuable goods is a pretty well-established process.
- jasonlotito 1y ago
  They paid for the water that the municipality could afford to sell. They didn't pay into the municipality. If the municipality doesn't have excess water, why should they be forced to sell it?
  - nyeah 1y ago
    They paid the municipality for the water, but they didn't pay the municipality. Got it.
    - lokar 1y ago
      There is a very real legal and practical difference between paying for 100G of water, and paying for the right to buy 100G per week for the next N years. Both have a price in the American west, and they did not pay the latter price.
      - nyeah 1y ago
        Nobody is arguing otherwise, including the people interviewed in the article. The claim was that these people didn't pay. That claim turns out to be incorrect.
        jasonlotito 1y ago
        > The claim was that these people didn't pay. That's literally not what people were claiming. This is a lie.
        nyeah 1y ago
        If anyone actually cares about this thread, please hit "parent" a few times to see what everyone really wrote.
    - jasonlotito 1y ago
      That's not what people are saying. People are saying they weren't paying into the municipality. That implies people paying into the municipality are paying for more than just water. The people buying the water were just buying water. Now, maybe that's now how you think of it, but I'm sure you can see how others see it. Even YOU understand the difference because you had to misrepresent what people were saying. > They paid the municipality for the water, but they didn't pay into the municipality. That's the difference. "into" doesn't mean they are merely paying the municipality, but rather, they are paying to support the municipality. The people buying water? They are merely buying water that's up for sale. That's it. There is no implication beyond that. Intent matters. And it's clear that the outsiders had no intention of supporting the municipality even if you want to suggest that was the case.
- michaelt 1y ago
  Many countries have rural water users subsidised by urban water users, because rural users need 100 times as much pipe buried and maintained per customer, but everyone pays the same rate for water. Of course, in my country we tolerate that - it's normal for food to flow into urban areas and money to flow out, water pricing is just an obscure element of that.
  - ajb 1y ago
    These users were not in the piped network. They were driving to a station to collect water in tanks. If anything, that's cheaper to maintain.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      Even if it's not "cheaper" it's not the utility's problem what the user's hauling equipment costs.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    I’ve never seen “rural” properties on “city” water unless a pipe happened to be running down the road for an existing development anyway. Otherwise it’s all wells, sometimes tremendously deep.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      Depends on the area. I live in iowa - nearly everyone is on rural water because wells don't produce much water. I'm on a well and I can't water my lawn - after an hour my well is empty. My well is about a meter in diameter so that should be a lot stored. it would be $20k to extend the city water pipe to my lot. i used to live in MN, there I knew farmers on a 5cm well who had no problem watering lawns, and 50 cows from the well. in colorado where this story is water is less available than iowa. (most farms have a year round creek that could be treated to become drinkable)
      - bombcar 1y ago
        That’s one of the real solutions - we shouldn’t be using potable water for everything. Houses that are plumbed on city water should have two water sources - potable and other.
Steven420 1y ago
I believe they were paying for the water
- nyeah 1y ago
  10 cents a gallon, it says, and they haul it themselves.
- jasonlotito 1y ago
  Yes, they were buying water that the municipality could sell. And they got that water. The article suggests that the municipality is rationing its residents' water, so they don't have excess water to sell to outsiders. Basically, the idea that I'm required to sell something is silly. No one said any contracts were broken. People got what they paid for.
  - sliken 1y ago
    Right, but the system needed maintenance, and people would still need to ration water and not water their lawns, even if the water they sell to outsiders (less than 1%) stopped.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    It is silly on the towns part as they lost far more. The rural restedents were paying a lot more than the locals.
thinkingtoilet 1y ago
I agree with some of what you said, but doing it without warning seems unnecessarily harsh. This quote from the article is pretty ripe though: “I was always drawn to the mountains when I was traveling around the country and, to be honest, it was affordable,” she said. “It was off grid. It had a structure. It was away from people. The view is incredible. There’s climbing, hiking. It was somewhere I could afford and have land in Colorado.” I wanted to live off the grid, but not that off the grid.
- CodingJeebus 1y ago
  I don't agree with how the city made the decision either. But the politics is pretty simple: you are going to support the interests of the people who voted for you over those who have no vote. And those who have no vote in this matter chose to have no vote by living outside of the city.
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    > those who have no vote They are residents of some governance unit and, therefore, vote somewhere. Is that possible to have no right to vote because you live in the wrong place?
    - CodingJeebus 1y ago
      > Is that possible to have no right to vote because you live in the wrong place? You don't have the right to vote in a city that you do not live in, and the water system is controlled by the city in this case. I assume they can vote for county offices, and the county is now determining how best they can serve their residents now that the city is unable to.
    - HankStallone 1y ago
      I live a couple miles outside the borders of a town, so I don't get to vote in town elections, just county and township elections. However, I do all my shopping in town, use the town library, drive on the town's roads, belong to some organizations that do charitable work in town, etc. It's fair to say that I'm affected by town politics in a lot of ways, but I don't get in a say in those politics. Sometimes the lines about what affects you are blurry, but the question of whether you get a vote isn't: you do or you don't. Maybe rural people should get a partial vote in town affairs, 3/5 or something like that.
david38 1y ago
Except they didn’t. A proper municipality decision would have been discussed publicly with advance notice. This is like the board of directors of Toyota deciding to stop selling to the US without advance notice without input from the shareholders, the US, or advance notice. It is 100% disingenuous. In no municipality in America is the source of water not considered a long term source where change comes with months of notice. In no municipality is said change executed in a meeting without prior notice to the public with public commenting allowed.
giantg2 1y ago
"but it's hard to empathize with them when the municipality they're not paying into makes a decision on behalf of their own voters/taxpayers." They're paying for the water. It's not like they're getting it for free. Sure, the municipality could just not sell outside the municipality, but most utilities are forbidden from suddenly cutting off service due to health and safety concerns.
- Someone 1y ago
  Indeed. IMO, the municipality should have raised water prices for everyone to make supply match demand. And that doesn’t mean water bought ‘on demand’ would have to be equally costly as what people who ‘subscribed’ to water pay.
- sliken 1y ago
  From the article is sounds more like, some town folk don't like not being able to water their lawns. Said folks targeted the people buying water, despite them being less than 1% of the water used. Not to mention apparently they are providing 45% of the towns tax revenue with their water purchases. So an irrational decision fueling conflict.
  - usefulcat 1y ago
    > apparently they are providing 45% of the towns tax revenue with their water purchases "Revenue for the water sales to rural residents totaled $43,000 per year, about 15% of total revenue." This means that 'total revenue' is about $287k. I would guess that's the revenue of the water system, not the town's entire tax base. Still a significant figure, but not 45% of the town's tax revenue.
lokar 1y ago
It’s more than that. There is a finite and shrinking supply of water. The water district has every right, and IMO an obligation to protect supply to existing users. They do this by limiting availability to others. These people should not be living off the grid without securing water rights. This has been the system in the west since before statehood.
- jimnotgym 1y ago
  I don't read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, but I have seen that plot more than once.
rbanffy 1y ago
> municipality they're not paying into They probably pay more for their water than the people with metered service.
- micromacrofoot 1y ago
  unfortunately it seems you can't do society a la carte
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    Perhaps, but saying they don't deserve to be served by the township because they don't pay is disingenuous. In fact, them paying more subsidizes the other residents' water.
- nisegami 1y ago
  About 1% of use, 15% of revenue according to article.
- HankStallone 1y ago
  That's typical in the small towns around here that let you fill up water tanks at the base of the water tower. You'll pay a lot more than regular customers, but a lot less than buying it by the gallon at Walmart, and it costs the water company nothing except maintaining a hose.
ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
They maybe avoided municipal taxes but they overpaid for their water relative to the municipal users

culverv 1y ago

I can help a lot with this situation… My product “Sink Twice” was specifically designed for water crisis and helps both on and off grid. It takes about 5 minutes to install and saves tremendous amounts of water for more than a decade… and it is made in Dacono, Colorado.

Kapura 1y ago

they do pay into it, every time they buy the water. exchanging currency for valuable goods is a pretty well-established process.

jasonlotito 1y ago
They paid for the water that the municipality could afford to sell. They didn't pay into the municipality. If the municipality doesn't have excess water, why should they be forced to sell it?
- nyeah 1y ago
  They paid the municipality for the water, but they didn't pay the municipality. Got it.
  - lokar 1y ago
    There is a very real legal and practical difference between paying for 100G of water, and paying for the right to buy 100G per week for the next N years. Both have a price in the American west, and they did not pay the latter price.
    - nyeah 1y ago
      Nobody is arguing otherwise, including the people interviewed in the article. The claim was that these people didn't pay. That claim turns out to be incorrect.
      - jasonlotito 1y ago
        > The claim was that these people didn't pay. That's literally not what people were claiming. This is a lie.
        nyeah 1y ago
        If anyone actually cares about this thread, please hit "parent" a few times to see what everyone really wrote.
  - jasonlotito 1y ago
    That's not what people are saying. People are saying they weren't paying into the municipality. That implies people paying into the municipality are paying for more than just water. The people buying the water were just buying water. Now, maybe that's now how you think of it, but I'm sure you can see how others see it. Even YOU understand the difference because you had to misrepresent what people were saying. > They paid the municipality for the water, but they didn't pay into the municipality. That's the difference. "into" doesn't mean they are merely paying the municipality, but rather, they are paying to support the municipality. The people buying water? They are merely buying water that's up for sale. That's it. There is no implication beyond that. Intent matters. And it's clear that the outsiders had no intention of supporting the municipality even if you want to suggest that was the case.
michaelt 1y ago
Many countries have rural water users subsidised by urban water users, because rural users need 100 times as much pipe buried and maintained per customer, but everyone pays the same rate for water. Of course, in my country we tolerate that - it's normal for food to flow into urban areas and money to flow out, water pricing is just an obscure element of that.
- ajb 1y ago
  These users were not in the piped network. They were driving to a station to collect water in tanks. If anything, that's cheaper to maintain.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    Even if it's not "cheaper" it's not the utility's problem what the user's hauling equipment costs.
- bombcar 1y ago
  I’ve never seen “rural” properties on “city” water unless a pipe happened to be running down the road for an existing development anyway. Otherwise it’s all wells, sometimes tremendously deep.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Depends on the area. I live in iowa - nearly everyone is on rural water because wells don't produce much water. I'm on a well and I can't water my lawn - after an hour my well is empty. My well is about a meter in diameter so that should be a lot stored. it would be $20k to extend the city water pipe to my lot. i used to live in MN, there I knew farmers on a 5cm well who had no problem watering lawns, and 50 cows from the well. in colorado where this story is water is less available than iowa. (most farms have a year round creek that could be treated to become drinkable)
    - bombcar 1y ago
      That’s one of the real solutions - we shouldn’t be using potable water for everything. Houses that are plumbed on city water should have two water sources - potable and other.

Steven420 1y ago

I believe they were paying for the water

nyeah 1y ago
10 cents a gallon, it says, and they haul it themselves.
jasonlotito 1y ago
Yes, they were buying water that the municipality could sell. And they got that water. The article suggests that the municipality is rationing its residents' water, so they don't have excess water to sell to outsiders. Basically, the idea that I'm required to sell something is silly. No one said any contracts were broken. People got what they paid for.
- sliken 1y ago
  Right, but the system needed maintenance, and people would still need to ration water and not water their lawns, even if the water they sell to outsiders (less than 1%) stopped.
- bluGill 1y ago
  It is silly on the towns part as they lost far more. The rural restedents were paying a lot more than the locals.

thinkingtoilet 1y ago

I agree with some of what you said, but doing it without warning seems unnecessarily harsh. This quote from the article is pretty ripe though: “I was always drawn to the mountains when I was traveling around the country and, to be honest, it was affordable,” she said. “It was off grid. It had a structure. It was away from people. The view is incredible. There’s climbing, hiking. It was somewhere I could afford and have land in Colorado.” I wanted to live off the grid, but not that off the grid.

CodingJeebus 1y ago
I don't agree with how the city made the decision either. But the politics is pretty simple: you are going to support the interests of the people who voted for you over those who have no vote. And those who have no vote in this matter chose to have no vote by living outside of the city.
- rbanffy 1y ago
  > those who have no vote They are residents of some governance unit and, therefore, vote somewhere. Is that possible to have no right to vote because you live in the wrong place?
  - CodingJeebus 1y ago
    > Is that possible to have no right to vote because you live in the wrong place? You don't have the right to vote in a city that you do not live in, and the water system is controlled by the city in this case. I assume they can vote for county offices, and the county is now determining how best they can serve their residents now that the city is unable to.
  - HankStallone 1y ago
    I live a couple miles outside the borders of a town, so I don't get to vote in town elections, just county and township elections. However, I do all my shopping in town, use the town library, drive on the town's roads, belong to some organizations that do charitable work in town, etc. It's fair to say that I'm affected by town politics in a lot of ways, but I don't get in a say in those politics. Sometimes the lines about what affects you are blurry, but the question of whether you get a vote isn't: you do or you don't. Maybe rural people should get a partial vote in town affairs, 3/5 or something like that.

david38 1y ago

Except they didn’t. A proper municipality decision would have been discussed publicly with advance notice. This is like the board of directors of Toyota deciding to stop selling to the US without advance notice without input from the shareholders, the US, or advance notice. It is 100% disingenuous. In no municipality in America is the source of water not considered a long term source where change comes with months of notice. In no municipality is said change executed in a meeting without prior notice to the public with public commenting allowed.

giantg2 1y ago

"but it's hard to empathize with them when the municipality they're not paying into makes a decision on behalf of their own voters/taxpayers." They're paying for the water. It's not like they're getting it for free. Sure, the municipality could just not sell outside the municipality, but most utilities are forbidden from suddenly cutting off service due to health and safety concerns.

Someone 1y ago
Indeed. IMO, the municipality should have raised water prices for everyone to make supply match demand. And that doesn’t mean water bought ‘on demand’ would have to be equally costly as what people who ‘subscribed’ to water pay.
sliken 1y ago
From the article is sounds more like, some town folk don't like not being able to water their lawns. Said folks targeted the people buying water, despite them being less than 1% of the water used. Not to mention apparently they are providing 45% of the towns tax revenue with their water purchases. So an irrational decision fueling conflict.
- usefulcat 1y ago
  > apparently they are providing 45% of the towns tax revenue with their water purchases "Revenue for the water sales to rural residents totaled $43,000 per year, about 15% of total revenue." This means that 'total revenue' is about $287k. I would guess that's the revenue of the water system, not the town's entire tax base. Still a significant figure, but not 45% of the town's tax revenue.

lokar 1y ago

It’s more than that. There is a finite and shrinking supply of water. The water district has every right, and IMO an obligation to protect supply to existing users. They do this by limiting availability to others. These people should not be living off the grid without securing water rights. This has been the system in the west since before statehood.

jimnotgym 1y ago
I don't read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, but I have seen that plot more than once.

rbanffy 1y ago

> municipality they're not paying into They probably pay more for their water than the people with metered service.

micromacrofoot 1y ago
unfortunately it seems you can't do society a la carte
- rbanffy 1y ago
  Perhaps, but saying they don't deserve to be served by the township because they don't pay is disingenuous. In fact, them paying more subsidizes the other residents' water.
nisegami 1y ago
About 1% of use, 15% of revenue according to article.
HankStallone 1y ago
That's typical in the small towns around here that let you fill up water tanks at the base of the water tower. You'll pay a lot more than regular customers, but a lot less than buying it by the gallon at Walmart, and it costs the water company nothing except maintaining a hose.

ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago

They maybe avoided municipal taxes but they overpaid for their water relative to the municipal users