Bacterial levels last month in Fountain Creek, as it flows through Pueblo, were 240 times greater than state water-quality standards allow, local health department records show.
On July 27, Pueblo County health department officials recorded levels of E. coli bacteria at 30,760 parts per 100 milliliters of water in Fountain Creek, near the Eighth Street Bridge.
State water-quality standards say bacteria should not exceed 126 parts per 100 milliliters.
Pueblo health officials say the bacterial levels have been consistently high in the summer for years, but they aren’t sure of the source.
“What that says to me is that this is an ongoing issue in Pueblo,” said Dr. Christine Nevin- Woods, director of the local health department. “We need to do more monitoring to start to pinpoint a source.”
On Tuesday, Pueblo County District Attorney Bill Thiebaut threatened to sue Colorado Springs Utilities over recent spills of raw sewage into Fountain Creek.
Records show that Colorado Springs, the state’s second-largest city, has discharged almost 377,000 gallons of untreated sewage since May into the creek, which drains a 930-square-mile watershed running from Teller County to the Arkansas River in Pueblo.
Colorado Springs utility officials blamed vandalism and recent heavy rains for the spills, which are being investigated by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
“We honestly don’t know why the bacteria levels are high. They’re not making a lot of sense,” said Steve Berry, a spokesman for the utility.
Melinda Kassen, director of Trout Unlimited’s Western Water Project, said: “The problems in Fountain Creek have a lot to do with growth and sprawl and importation of water.”
Fountain Creek is also on the state’s list of pollution-impaired waters for selenium, a naturally occurring salt locked in the marine shales of an old seabed that underlie the region.
High levels of selenium can be toxic. Irrigation practices have leached selenium from farm soils, causing problems further down on the Arkansas River.
“Even if there were no spills this summer, everyone involved in the water-quality arena knows Fountain Creek has a big, big nonpoint-source problem,” Kassen said. “That’s exacerbated by storm sewers picking up runoff that used to infiltrate the ground.”
Pueblo gets its drinking water from a reservoir on the Arkansas River west of the city, before Fountain Creek flows into the river.
Nevin-Woods said the local health department is also looking into bacterial levels in the Arkansas River, just below its confluence with Fountain Creek.
A public meeting on the Fountain Creek problem, organized by state Rep. Dorothy Butcher, D-Pueblo, was to be held Wed nesday night.
“People in Pueblo deserve better,” Nevin-Woods said. “We’re not a Third World country.”
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com.
