Local officials may be prepared to do a little horse-trading instead of fighting over a $233,000 water and sewer hookup charge for a new detox facility.

Colorado Springs Utilities appears ready to forego the fee in exchange for an easement from El Paso County for the controversial $1 billion Southern Delivery System water line that will pipe water from Pueblo Reservoir, county officials said Tuesday.

Utilities spokesman Steve Berry declined to confirm the trade.

“We wouldn’t just waive that fee,” he said, adding that city and county officials are “talking.”

“It’s not a waiver of the tap fee,” County Administrator Jeff Greene said, “but Utilities is recognizing the value of the required easement” for the water line.

Greene said the deal revolves around a 3,600-foot county-owned easement east of Powers Boulevard. He said the land likely would have been given to the city under different circumstances, just as the county has provided many easements to the city through the years.

The detox center, which could cost as much as $1.4 million, is being built next to the Criminal Justice Center on East Las Vegas Street and will tap lines the county built from Las Vegas when the jail was expanded four years ago.

Sheriff Terry Maketa called the charge “ridiculous” and noted the detox center will benefit city-owned Memorial Health System, the de facto dumping ground for drunks after the Lighthouse Assessment Center stopped providing detox services in February.

After the city refused to waive the fee, Greene asked county commissioners last week to rescind approval of an unrelated sewer easement Utilities needs to serve a 10-acre housing development on the west side.

Utilities said there was “no way” it would waive the hookup fee, because that would violate its regulations.

“We’re trying to make it work,” Deputy County Administrator Monnie Gore said Tuesday. He and Greene, said they expect to receive a written proposal from Utilities within days.

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Call Zubeck at 636-0238

Ken Moon, Around the House columnist Photo by