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OPINION
Last July El Paso County hosted the first meeting of what came to be called The Fountain Creek Visioning Task Force. In previous meetings with Colorado Open Space, Senator Salazar’s Office, Colorado Springs, Fort Carson and the Nature Conservancy we discussed the possibility of forming a broad based coalition to explore solutions on Fountain Creek. The next meeting was held in Pueblo and grew from a brainstorming group of about 40 to over 150. El Paso County continued to lead but we have since turned that over to an independent facilitator. To date, there have been over 250 attendees from 5 counties, funding from the Lower Arkansas Water Round Table, and people talking to each other that previously would have crossed the street to avoid passing on the sidewalk. The City of Fountain has been generous with use of the City Council Chambers for meetings, with the occasional meeting being held in Pueblo. Working groups have been formed to deal with Water Quality, Water Quantity, as well as Environment & Land Use. The voting group, called the Consensus Committee (proof that we have a professional facilitator), is made up of 28 members representing groups from landowners, cities, water districts, utilities, counties, parks, and open space groups. That may seem like a lot of people to agree to anything, much less something as controversial as water, but as the voting member representing El Paso County I can tell you it does seem to be working. We keep hearing this is the easy part; the hard part will come when we look at paying for improvements. However, at the moment I can define progress as getting the ranchers, homeowners, cities, counties, environmentalist and politicians agreeing on the mission statement - and we have. We are looking at the entire watershed because many of the problems originate some distance from Fountain Creek but compound when they converge into one channel. While the Army Corp of Engineers works on completing their study that will give us benchmarks and suggestions of how to manage the water flow, we can work toward solutions that will likely involve some changes in how the drainages are managed to improve the quality and keep the water from reaching Fountain Creek so quickly. It is much too soon to be talking about success, but with ranchers feeling the pressure of development, State Parks looking for recreation, environmental groups dedicated to preserving open space, down stream folks wanting clean water without the floods, and El Paso County needing the creek to stay away from roads and houses, the urgency to get something going on the Fountain Creek watershed seems to have reached critical mass. The next step may be to determine if the political will is there to create some sort of a watershed authority or urban drainage district with an independently elected governing body - without giving up local control.
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