Cedaredge comes out ahead on North Ridge waterline project costs, prepares to buy Chipmunk Reservoir

North Ridge

North Ridge, an out-of-town subdivision along Highway 65 between 2375 Road and 2325 Road, accounts for approximately 17% of the town’s water loss due to it’s dilapidated water lines, according to Town Administrator Kami Collins. Therefore, the project at hand will replace about 20,000 linear feet of waterline in that area, substantially cutting back on existing leaks.

Collins said the project has been on the town’s capital improvement plan for about 12 years, but a recent “perfect storm” of funding opportunities made the hefty price tag more digestible.

“It’s a massive project, and we have not had the funds available to do so until now,” Collins said.

The first facet to the perfect storm came from a $1 million loan the town took out from the State of Colorado’s revolving loan fund, a passthrough of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill funding. However, as Cedaredge qualifies as a disadvantaged community, the state authorized 80% forgiveness of that loan, dropping the repayment to $200,000.

The second piece to the overall picture was a $750,000 grant from the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA), and the third piece was the final remains of the town’s funds, $195,000, from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

The 10% contingency did come out of water reserves, and the town will probably have to spend that money, according to Collins, particularly due to continuously rising costs.

In the end, Collins expects that the water users of North Ridge will only have to pay back about $394,000 of the nearly $2 million project cost.

The repayment plan will ultimately come through water bill adjustments for the 85 customers in the affected area, but terms of a schedule and overall amounts will be determined after the town undergoes a water rate study, the results of which are expected by late summer.

Chipmunk Reservoir

The Town of Cedaredge recently agreed to a purchase agreement for the acquisition of Chipmunk Reservoir on Grand Mesa. The reservoir is currently privately owned, but faced with a half a million dollar rebuild cost, one of the shareholders approached the Cedaredge Board of Trustees a little over a year ago to ask if the town would be interested in buying the reservoir.

Due to the condition of the reservoir and the private citizen status of its owners, Chipmunk Reservoir was in danger of deferring back to the State of Colorado, according to Town Administrator Kami Collins.

After a year of negotiations, the agreement states that the Town of Cedaredge will buy Chipmunk Reservoir from the private parties for $25,000 and one full share in the Surface Creek Ditch and Reservoir Company.

Collins said the negotiations took off due to the board’s current priorities of water conservation and acquisition in the midst of regular droughts. From the board’s perspective, as a government entity, numerous funding opportunities are available for the rebuilding of the reservoir.

The rebuild will be a big project, Collins said, but it most likely will not begin this year. Instead, the board will likely plan the project into the capital improvement plan revision next year.