It’s just a drop in the Pentagon’s $716 billion budget, but an amendment proposed by Colorado Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet would give a flood of cash to El Paso County water districts battling contamination in the Widefield aquifer.
Bennet’s amendment would provide as much as $9 million to reimburse water utilities in Security, Widefield and Fountain for what they laid out in 2016 after learning their drinking water contained unsafe levels of perfluorinated chemicals from toxic firefighting foam released by Peterson Air Force Base.
Districts’ officials assumed the Air Force would pay to fight the contamination and were shocked when the military refused to pay the bill.
That’s where Bennet’s amendment comes in.
Heald said the senators have worked for months to figure out a fix for the utilities’ financial woes.
"They have both been here to talk to us directly about these issues," he said.
But Heald isn’t counting the federal cash just yet.
But then he will have to fight with House lawmakers who signed off on their version of the defense bill, which doesn’t contain the water money.
At least $47 million has been spent by local water districts or allocated by the military for southern El Paso County since 2016, including at least $38 million spent or budgeted by the Air Force to investigate the contamination, buy filters, procure clean water and erect long-term treatment plants over the next several years.
– Contact Tom Roeder: 626-0240 Twitter: @xroederx