Gov. Polis calls for investigation into water district disaster in Colorado
After years of fighting for clean drinking water, a Morgan County neighborhood is finally getting help. A series of stories by CBS Colorado exposed a water district disaster 20 years in the making and got the attention of Gov. Jared Polis.
Now, he's doing what many other government officials have failed to do - he's helping.
The governor says every Colorado deserves to have clean water. Yet, all the checks and balances meant to ensure safe drinking water failed at Prairie View Ranch Water District and residents say the people they turned to for help turned a blind eye.
Their drinking water is now black sludge that certified lab tests show has unsafe levels of radioactive lead and uranium.
Emails obtained through an open records request show the Colorado Water Quality Control Division knew there was a problem with the water as early as 2007 and yet waited 10 years to act.
Now, Jesse McCoppin, who has led the fight for clean water in his neighborhood, says the 150 residents who live there receive bottled water notices as they pay hundreds of dollars for water they can't drink, "We have to send that message out every 14 days as a reminder - do not drink the water until further notice."
The Water Quality Division says it has no oversight of water systems until after they're built and at least 25 people are drinking the water.
The Health Department itself calls the rule a "regulatory paradox." But it wasn't in effect when Prairie View Ranch Water District was built in 2004. The rule back then said any system expected to "one day" serve more than 25 people needed design approval before construction. There are examples across where the Water Quality Division requires other water districts, similar in size to Prairie View Ranch, to go through the approval process. But McCoppin says developers got a pass at Prairie View Ranch. Now he says the infrastructure is failing and an engineering report found it will cost up to $20 million to fix it.
Governor Polis thanked your investigator Shaun Boyd for her reports saying he was shocked to learn about the disaster, "This is a real problem. My first reaction is we got to fix it but also we got to see where else this might be happening in our state."
McCoppin says what happened here could have been prevented. Morgan County Commissioners and a district court judge approved the special district - which is a tax-exempt public entity - even though the service plan called it an LLC - or private for-profit company.
They allowed developers to run the water district board and bank account for 16 years while McCoppin says residents were in the dark.
Based on tap fees and financial documents filed with the State Auditor's Office, McCoppin says at least a million dollars is missing. The Auditor's Office exempted developers from audits for years despite what McCoppin says were glaring errors in their reports.
He shared the reports two years ago with the Morgan County District Attorney's office and Attorney General Phil Weiser's office. He says a D-A investigator told him they didn't have the bandwidth to investigate, and he says all he can get from the AG's Office is automated replies.
The governor is calling for an investigation, "Should be fully investigated whether it's the DA, whether it's the attorney general. If there were laws that were violated, then people should be held criminally responsible."
While Polis won't say what he did after seeing our stories, McCoppin says the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and EPA suddenly want to help. They've identified millions in grant money to overhaul the water system, but he says clean water could still be years away.
The state health department says some grants are approved within months of the paperwork being submitted but, most of the grants are from the federal government and this week, the Trump administration attempted to pause some loans and grants.
In addition to the Water Quality Division, McCoppin says, the Colorado Division of Housing also dropped the ball. The copper insignia in his manufactured home says it was installed in May 2020 by a developer named Fred Gibbs. But Gibbs died a month earlier and emails obtained through an open records request show the Division of Housing knew it and gave its seal of approval anyway. Then it allowed an unregistered installer to take over for Gibbs. An email from a project manager asks in disbelief - "...all three of these installations were done unlawfully by an unregistered installer?"
The Division of Housing says it doesn't know who installed McCoppin's house and it says the insignia was filled out by someone who didn't know Gibbs had died.
Attorney Tim Goddard represents developers John Pearson and Doreya Gibbs, whose company is called Prairie View Ranch Partners. Goddard released a statement saying, "There was no "skirting" of State or local regulations. Any statement otherwise is false." He says the company owned by the developers "retained a Colorado licensed professional engineer who was experienced in the design and development of similar water systems in the Morgan County area to design the water system. During the time the water system was designed and constructed, the Company understood that all applicable State requirements were being satisfied. The Company nor any of its members took any money from the District, and any claim otherwise is false and would constitute defamation... The Company has continued to fund the costs to retain several engineers to investigate the water quality and to identify and implement a solution that is acceptable to the CDPHE. Those efforts are continuing, including recently paying $227,000 to retain a specialized contractor to clean the water tanks and flush the water delivery system, as required by the CDPHE."
