The Arkansas Valley Conduit (AVC) has received another $250 million in funding to advance the decades-long project to bring clean drinking water to communities east of Pueblo.
According to a Jan. 8 news release from the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton traveled to Pueblo on Wednesday to announce the additional construction funding.
“We are proud to see the work underway because of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda,” Touton said in the release. “But there’s much more work to be done and we are again investing in this important project to bring safe drinking water to an estimated 50,000 people in 39 rural communities along the Arkansas River.”
The new funds come through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and are part of a $514 million package of water infrastructure investments throughout the western United States.
The additional funding brings the total federal investment in the conduit to almost $590 million since 2020, along with state funding guarantees of $90 million in loans and $30 million in grants, according to the release.
What is the Arkansas Valley Conduit?
The AVC is a planned 130-mile water-delivery system from the Pueblo Reservoir to communities throughout the Arkansas River Valley in southeast Colorado; it’s the final phase of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, which was authorized by Congress in 1962.
The AVC was authorized as part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project in 1962, but it was never built, primarily because program participants were unable to repay construction costs, according to the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District.
In 2009, Congress amended the original Fryingpan-Arkansas Project legislation to include a cost-sharing plan with 65% federal and 35% local funding. The locally funded portion will be repaid by the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District (District) to the federal government over a period of 50 years.
Arkansas Valley Conduit trunk line construction in Pueblo County, with WCA Construction LLC crews installing the pipeline.
Why is the conduit needed?
Most of the 39 communities that will be served by the conduit following its completion rely on groundwater and need a new, reliable supply of fresh water.
Those communities face state compliance issues because of naturally occurring salinity or radionuclide contamination, according to the conservancy district.
The AVC will particularly help 18 water systems that face enforcement action for naturally occurring radionuclides — an unstable form of a chemical element that releases radiation as it breaks down and becomes more stable — in their groundwater supplies.
Construction of the AVC began in 2023. Three major construction contracts have been awarded and nearly 10 miles of pipeline have been installed, according to a Jan. 9 news release from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Once complete, the project will consist of more than 121 miles of pipeline that will deliver up to 7,500 acre-feet of water per year from Pueblo Reservoir.
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Chieftain Editor Zach Hillstrom can be reached at zhillstrom@gannett.com or on X, at @ZachHillstrom. Support local news, subscribe to the Pueblo Chieftain at subscribe.chieftain.com.
This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo Arkansas Valley Conduit gets $250 million funding boost