From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):
The Colorado Water Quality Division of the Department of Public Health and Environment has determined violations of previous compliance orders for sanitary sewer overflows during the last five years resulted in civil penalties of more than $50,000, according to consent decrees on amendments to previous compliance orders. Previous penalties have totaled about $400,000…
The amount of contaminants spilled in the last five years is far less than the discharges from 1998-2005 that led to the compliance orders, but each incident is a violation of state law, according to amendments released this month by the Colorado Water Quality Division.
The division listed eight releases of partially treated wastewater, called reclaimed water, between 50 and 3,500 gallons into Monument Creek or Fountain Creek from 2006-10. Causes ranged from equipment or line failure to contractor damage. Civil penalties for those releases totaled $13,266. The division listed 18 releases of raw sewage into Fountain Creek or its tributaries ranging from 2 to 8,700 gallons from 2006-10. The releases were caused by blockages, vandalism and in one case equipment malfunction. Civil penalties for those releases totalled $43,624…
Colorado Springs has spent $143 million in improvements to comply with state orders on its sanitary sewer system since 2000. The political furor over the continued spills into Fountain Creek resulted in the Fountain Creek Vision Task Force and led to the formation of the Fountain Creek Watershed Flood Control and Greenway District. Colorado Springs also committed to spend $75 million over 15 years for additional wastewater system improvements as part of its 1041 permit with Pueblo County for the Southern Delivery System, and reported spending $9 million toward that figure last year.