How Minturn’s settlement with Battle Mountain developers and a decades long effort to build a water treatment plant are connected

The Minturn Town Council, in recent years, has become increasingly vexed about plans to build a new water treatment plant in town as construction costs continue to rise.

Town officials have known for years, decades even, that a time would come when the current facility would outgrow its useful life. Minturn Town Council members had that in mind back in 2008 when a group of developers known as the Battle Mountain group received a go-ahead from voters to move forward with a plan to construct 1,700 new homes on a large plot of land above Minturn.

One of the perks the town was to receive in exchange for annexing that 5,300-acre site was the construction of a new water treatment facility in town. Minturn does not receive its water from the Eagle River Water Sanitation District and has, since the town’s incorporation 120 years ago, provided its own water to property owners in town.

Minturn annexed the Battle Mountain developers’ land into its town limits with the expectation that the group would pay for a new water treatment plant and other new water infrastructure. But while the annexation became final, the water treatment plant never materialized.

That was one of several issues that prompted the town to send the developers a notice of default in 2021 before suing the Battle Mountain group in 2022.

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With that lawsuit now nearing the conclusion of a settlement, Minturn is set to receive several tracts of land that could have a worth of more than $47 million once environmental remediation is completed on some of the tracts listed in the settlement.

It’s a situation Minturn Town Council members often reference when debating what to do about the current water situation in town.

“It seems that one of the big reasons behind going through this settlement process was to shore up some obligations that the town was going to use to pay for some improvements in water treatment,” Town Council member Brian Rodine said during the town’s Sept. 3 meeting. “That was the reason we were in the lawsuit in the first place.”

Minturn’s current treatment plant was constructed in the 1960s and used pipes made of wood to transport water to users.

The treatment plant once employed three slow-sand filter bays, but due to the age of those bays and new regulations on such facilities, two of the three sand filter operations have been taken out of service.

The town also has a cartridge plant that can treat surface water diverted from Cross Creek, but that’s limited to about 50 gallons per minute and doesn’t work well during spring runoff when there’s an abundance of particulate matter known as turbidity in the Cross Creek surface water.

In a worst-case scenario — where only one well is operational while Cross Creek is simultaneously experiencing high turbidity — the town can’t meet its average daily water demands.

That combination of circumstances has prompted the town to stop the issuance of new water tap permits to construction projects involving more than three single-family homes. That moratorium was first issued in 2020 and has been ongoing since that time.

But over the years, the estimated cost of a water treatment plant has increased dramatically.

“We could have had a water treatment plant in 2013 for $1.5 million if we would have just pulled the trigger,” said council member Kate Schifani.

The latest cost estimates put the plant somewhere in the $12 million to $14 million range. That could translate to a more than $115 per month rate increase for homeowners in Minturn, something the Town Council is working to reduce.

“I couldn’t look at my neighbors knowing that we had to increase their rate $100,” said Town Council member Gusty Kanakis. “Bringing it up that high, we’re running people out of town.”

One way to reduce that number would be to sell some of the property the town will receive in the settlement with Battle Mountain and use the funds to pay for the water treatment plant.

“The Settlement Agreement provides that the land obtained in the settlement also compensates the water enterprise fund,” according to a September memo to the Town Council from town staff. “To that end, proceeds from the sale of a portion of the property can be used to assist with costs associated with a water treatment plant.”

Town Attorney Mike Sawyer said before anyone would buy the land, the town would need to determine what the appropriate use of the land would be.

“We zoned it as a holding zone, which doesn’t have any uses by right,” Sawyer said. “I think 9 to 12 months would be kind of optimistic, to put a package of entitlements together to where someone would say ‘I’d like to buy that.'”

The town, on Sept. 3, approved a motion to direct Town Manager Michelle Metteer to review any possible additional funding options which have yet to be uncovered and seek cost-sharing negotiation discussion with potential developers in town. Metteer said she will return to the council in three months with an update on any progress that has been made in those areas.

Schifani was the lone objector to the motion.

“I see no benefit in waiting three months,” she said.