Aspen Park district closer to discharging wastewater into South Turkey Creek

The Conifer King Soopers shopping center may be able to discharge treated wastewater overflow into South Turkey Creek by the time spring’s runoff arrives, an attorney said.
The Aspen Park Metropolitan Water District has only a few hoops left to jump through before it can legally send excess wastewater into the creek, said attorney Marti Whitmore, who represents the district.
If the permit is granted by Jefferson County, the district will still use its exfiltration system underneath the parking lot as much as possible, Whitmore said.
“We wanted to make sure people understand that we’re going to continue using the exfiltration,” Whitmore said. “It’s not that we’re doing it all surface discharge.”
However, Whitmore didn’t know how much water could be discharged to South Turkey Creek.
The shopping center uses about 25,000 gallons of water daily. Most of the water that goes down the drain — from sinks, cleaning, leftover drinking water, flushed toilets — currently goes into an exfiltration system under the parking lot that filters through the rocky soil and returns to the groundwater.
But the system has limitations the district didn’t expect as a result of Conifer’s rocky soil.
“We thought more would go into the ground than actually is happening,” Whitmore said.
Instead, the system often has more water than it can handle, particularly during the spring runoffs, Whitmore said.
“Physically, it will only seep in so much water over a certain period of time,” she said. “It has to go somewhere.”
Excess water now goes into a retaining basin until the exfiltration system has available space. If the basin is too full, water is taken to a treatment facility at Bear Creek and then put into the South Platte River.
The district wanted to apply about four years ago for a Jefferson County discharge permit to send the treated excess water into South Turkey Creek. County officials had objections, so the district tried some alternatives, Whitmore said. A second exfiltration system failed, and a “last-ditch attempt” at an injection well, which pipes the treated water deeper into the ground, failed as well.
In the fall of 2011, the district filed for a permit and a site-approval amendment with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment that will allow the center’s excess wastewater to be treated and released in the creek. The treated water is “drinking water standard,” Whitmore said during a Feb. 15 Conifer Area Council Town Hall meeting.
“We feel confident we’ll meet (water standards) without problem,” she said.
The district also is almost finished with a water-rights application with the Colorado Water Court that was started almost a year ago, Whitmore said.
As part of the approval process, the Jefferson County planning commission also will have a 30-day period to provide its feedback to the project. The meetings are public, and anyone may attend, although the dates have not yet been set.

Contact Gabrielle Porter at Gabrielle@evergreenco.com or 303-350-1043. Check www.HighTimberTimes.com for updates.