In a year of record municipal water use, the town of Monument has drilled three new wells that are set to go online by the end of November. Public Works Director Tom Tharnish said he hoped the wells would be the last needed before the town joins a regional water project years in the works.

“The less you pump out of the ground, the more will remain,” said Tharnish, referring to the underground aquifers at varying depths that supply water to a portion of Monument.

The municipality supplies water to a section of the town west of Interstate 25, while other water districts supply the rest of the town. Monument currently pumps water from 10 wells. The three new wells will increase water production, keeping the town from enacting additional use restrictions in times of shortage.

The wells also allow the town to keep guaranteeing water supply to proposed new developments.

“We have to calculate demand and make sure we have enough available,” said Tharnish.

The wells are a stopgap measure in the long term, however. Aquifers that supply Monument are being depleted over time as regional use exceeds the rate that water collects underground. The U.S. Geological Survey says areas of the west side of the Denver Basin, a large Front Range aquifer system that supplies Monument, are at risk of depletion within 10 to 15 years.

This year Monument had a record use month in July at over 21 million gallons. The last record, said Tharnish, was 19 million gallons.

The wells, in addition to sustainability concerns, are also part of an imperfect system for water treatment. Tharnish said that since most of the wells are treated separately, if one well begins producing water with contaminants higher than the state-allowed level, that well’s water cannot be diluted down to safe levels by mixing with other sources before entering the distribution system.

A scenario like this happened in 2017, when one Monument well began producing higher levels of radium. Monument shut down the well entirely to build a system to filter out the naturally occurring radioactive metal that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The longer-term solution for Monument is connecting to regional water infrastructure.

The Triview Metropolitan District, a Monument water provider east of Interstate 25, brought online its own replacement for groundwater wells this August: the Northern Delivery System.

A $73 million project years in the making, the NDS connection to Monument brings newly purchased water from Fountain Creek and the Upper and Lower Arkansas River via a Colorado Springs Utilities water-treatment facility. The project allows the metro district to keep its current groundwater wells on reserve rather than as a primary source.

West Monument had the option to join onto the NDS, but is currently planning a partnership project with three other entities in El Paso County. The Loop Water Authority was created among the partners of Monument, Cherokee Metro District, Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District and Donala Water and Sanitation District.

The project is currently planning to create a “loop” of water flowing down Fountain Creek and back up via a Loop Water System Pipeline, flowing through each of the partnered districts and Monument. The project also will allow Monument to recycle water pulled from wells.

Cost estimates presented last year were $165 million to more than $250 million for the overall project. Monument would pay a smaller percentage based on the share of water it provides.

The project is still in the planning phase, but Tharnish said he hoped The Loop would solve Monument’s long-term water problem.

“It reduces your reliance on groundwater, which has been a concern for 20 years,” said Tharnish.