What's Really in Your Water? Wells, Mining, and Colorado Mountain Living | Ep 9

If you own property in a Colorado mountain community, there's a good chance your water comes from a private well. But how much do you really know about what's in that water, where it comes from, or how future development could impact it?

In this episode of Real Estate in the Rockies, Ashley Kappel and Jessica Chariton sit down with geochemist Dr. Devin Castendyk to explore groundwater, private wells, water quality, mining history, and what property owners should know about protecting one of Colorado's most valuable resources.

Devin explains:

• how aquifers actually work
• what well owners should be testing for
• the difference between water rights and water availability
• how drought and development affect groundwater
• Colorado's mining legacy
• water quality concerns around historic mine sites
• and why future growth decisions should include water quality discussions

Whether you own a well, are considering purchasing rural property, or simply care about the future of Colorado mountain communities, this conversation offers practical insights and valuable perspective.

In This Episode

• Why private well owners should test their water
• The difference between city water and well water
• Common contaminants found in groundwater
• Understanding aquifers and groundwater systems
• Why water rights don't guarantee water supply
• How drought impacts private wells
• The relationship between development and groundwater
• Historic mining and Colorado's environmental legacy
• Mine tailings, waste rock, and water quality
• Modern mining and environmental improvements
• What local governments should consider when approving development
• Protecting Colorado's water resources for future generations

Memorable Quotes

"Having the right to a well doesn't guarantee there will be water."

"Groundwater changes very slowly. Surface water changes very quickly."

"If you're on a private well, testing is your responsibility."

"We should be discussing both water quantity and water quality when evaluating development."

Dr. Devin Castendyk is a Principal Geochemist with SRK Consulting in Denver, Colorado. He holds Bachelor and Master degrees in Geology and a PhD in Environmental Science.

From 2005 to 2015, Devin served as an Associate Professor of Water Resources at the State University of New York at Oneonta, where he taught groundwater hydrogeology, water chemistry, and water resources management.

Today, he works with the mining industry to help minimize impacts on water quality. Devin previously served on the Chaffee County Planning and Zoning Commission and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Greater Arkansas River Nature Association (GARNA).

Guest Links

SRK Consulting:
 https://www.srk.com/en/contact-us/denver

Greater Arkansas River Nature Association (GARNA)

Real Estate in the Rockies is the podcast exploring Colorado mountain real estate, housing, land use, development, zoning, community growth, and mountain living in Salida, Buena Vista, Chaffee County, and communities across the Rockies.

Hosted by Colorado real estate attorney Ashley Kappel and local realtor Jessica Chariton, the show brings together developers, community leaders, housing experts, investors, and local voices to break down the conversations shaping mountain towns today.

Whether you’re buying property in Colorado, navigating real estate development, exploring affordable housing challenges, or simply interested in the future of mountain communities, Real Estate in the Rockies delivers real conversations and local insight from the people living and working in these communities every day.

Subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify for new episodes every week.

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Please share this podcast with anyone who is interested in Real Estate development, Community Conversations about living in Colorado Mountain Towns. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hi, I'm Jessica Carrington, and this is Real Estate in the Rockies podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Ashley Cappell. Today we were able to interview Dr. Devin Kastendike, who is a geochemist and local to Salida. We're lucky to have him and his expertise on the podcast today. We talk about water, specifically wells and what might be in our water. And we also discuss mines. So both past and current mining operations and what some of that might mean for our mountain towns. So can't wait for you to listen to this episode. Welcome to Real Estate in the Rockies, a Colorado real estate podcast focused on mountain town real estate. I'm Ashley Capel, real estate attorney. And I'm Jessica Chariton, local realtor. And we're here to help you understand what's really happening in the Rockies. You're getting both the legal perspective and real-world experience so you can make smarter, more competition decisions in the Colorado real estate market. Follow real estate in the Rockies so you don't miss an episode.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

And share it with someone who cares about the future of our mountain communities. Because in the Rockies, real estate isn't just about property, it's about the community. Welcome to Real Estate in the Rockies Podcast. Today our guest is Devin, Dr. Devin Kastendike. He is a geochemist in the Celida area from the Salida area, and we are excited to have you on today. So thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah, you're welcome. Good to be here.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

Um, so we'll just jump right in. Um, many homeowners in Colorado Mountain communities rely on private wells. What are some of the most common water quality issues you see? And what should property owners be testing for that they may not realize?

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Yeah, so I think I'll start with the latter, you know, and again, this applies to anybody with a well. Yes, not city water. City water. Because that's monitored. Yeah, the public utility. That's taken care of. Department of Health gets reports all the time, they're all in the public record. If you want to know what's in city water, that's public information and relatively easy to find. Um, but personal wells are not part of that at all. Um, so there's um, I guess uh geochemists, chemists, we group chemicals into a couple of different categories. Um one is inorganic chemistry, um, which is basically your metals. Okay, so copper, lead, zinc, uh, arsenic, uh, which I'll probably talk a lot about today, uranium, fluoride, that all goes in the inorganic bin. Um, then there's uh bacterial, that's another category. Um, so not a surprise, you can probably guess what fecal coliforms are and where they come from. Okay, it's literally potty talk. Um, but yeah, that's where, you know, your well happens to be too close to somebody else's septic system. All right. And, you know, as uh uh as your house is being built by a contractor, they have to build it to code. So that is one of the big things that your contractor knows all about. You're the offset between the nearest septic field and your drinking water well. Um, but that's a category, and other categories would be organic chemicals. So the ones that most people have heard a lot about these days are PFAWs. Um, that used to be in fire retardants and in the stuff that they would spray hillsides with to put out fires while PFAS was in that. And in some areas, I know um, like the boulder fires that uh occurred, I think in the I'm gonna get the dates wrong, but within the last 20 years, uh, and homes were sprayed with fire retardant, and that ended up in the drinking water wells. So uh for like those folks, that's a constituent. But the if there's like 120 some odd chemicals in the periodic table in the you know, inorganic realm in the what we would call the um organic compound realm, there's there's thousands of different chemicals, and probably each one you could have a 20-minute conversation on. Some of them are very common and big ones. Uh, you might find them in gasoline or like it used to be in the 80s, leaky underground storage tanks. That's a gas station where they'd fill up the the gasoline stored underground, they would crack, they would leak, and that was a big uh big problem. And some of those compounds like would fall under that category as well. Um, so you know, those are those are kind of the three different bins that we we often talk about. And it really depends on where you're putting your house, you know. If you were hypothetically developing um but beside uh uh an agricultural area or a place where there's uh a lot of ranching, and maybe you know, the rancher uses um, you know, um what flood irrigation, you know, that could put a lot of the waste products from the cows into the ground. And so you might want to be looking at some of those bacterial components. Um, if you were developing on top of a mine site or near a mine site, or some people buy up old mining claims because they're cheap land and then they put a house on it, a dream home. Well, there then you'd get into the metals category. And some people maybe I don't know, there's some development at the bottom of S Mountain. We used to have a big railroad uh turnaround there, roundhouse there. And there's a lot of those organic compounds that are found in um that setting. So um polyaromatic hydrocarbons, there's a big mouthful, but basically chains of carbon and oxygen that happen to be carcinogenic. So, you know, there those would be another type of chemical that we might want to look at in that setting. So the long answer, as you could tell, it really depends on where you're building your house, you know.

SPEAKER_03 6:38

So, what do we do about this? I mean, how do you who tests? What do yeah, where do we great practically speaking?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, great, great question. And I I in anticipation of that, I just kind of looked up in Colorado today. Like, what what is recommended? And it is recommended, if you have your own well, to get your water tested.

SPEAKER_04 7:02

How awesome.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Um well, the good thing with groundwater, like I've owned my well for uh going on six years now, and you know, groundwater chemistry is pretty darn stable. Okay, you know, unless there's a big development right beside you, or some crazy event that's or some crazy event, yeah. You know, like if it but that that tends uh groundwater is like the um very slow changing, um, I don't know, like almost like human personalities. Some people never change, and some people like surface water is like the bipolar opposite, like it could be high one day and low the next day, and like so like they're different personalities, and surface water tends to be very changeable, and groundwater tends to be relatively constant, which is why I've only had my well tested once when we moved in. It's probably coming up like probably because I'm inherently interested, I'll have it tested again soon. Um, but um yeah, how often to have it tested. Um, some of these questions I should say I'm the geochemist, and probably a public health person might have a different opinion on. So I'm not a public health or you know, in that area. I would probably recommend every 10 years, you know, just just to be on the safe side, make sure nothing goes on.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

So I think the county, I just got a water test kit from Chafee County in the mail. Yeah, and I think they send them out periodically to well property owners.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

So they do, and and the one that the county gives out is in that biological category. Right. So it really we want to know is there um again, it's called fecal coliform, is a big category of bacteria, and in that category there is one strain, well, a couple different strains, but E. coli is a particularly type of bacteria that frankly we've all had. We've all had uh stomach bugs, you know, diarrhea. I hate to bring the conversation down to that level, but that's what it does. That's what we're talking about. For all of us, for healthy adults, we'll put it that way, it's not a big deal. You get sick for a couple of days. You know, for it for a child, for an elderly person, it can be life-threatening. So that's really where E. coli can be a big problem. Now, it it you have to be careful because if people got that test kit and they got their test done, they might say, Oh, I had my water tested. Well, you had that one bucket tested, you didn't test for the other things.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Yeah, it's like doing a blood panel at the doctor and you only do like your iron or just your cholesterol, but you tell the doctor, I want a full panel, like all the things tested, you gotta do the same with your water.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

That that is exactly a great analog analogy, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:59

Okay, that makes sense. So well, I have a follow-up. I read an article recently about the San Luis Valley. Oh, okay. Yeah. That said that there's high because you mentioned arsenic and uranium.

SPEAKER_04 10:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:11

Said that because of the drought conditions, perhaps, or I don't remember exactly the reason, but that the incre there was an increase in the levels of uranium and arsenic in that valley.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Have you uh do you I I'm not specifically aware of that, but I can see that, you know. So, you know, when you have a constituent dissolved in water, like say this little cup, if I put a pinch of salt in there, okay, I could probably taste it a little bit. If I lowered the water level, if I evaporated it, okay, the amount of salt in the that cup doesn't change, but the volume of water changes. And so I taste it again, and now I taste the salt even more. The same is going on in could be going on. Yeah, if we're not getting that fresh rain water coming in, the amount of dilution in the aquifer is less, and so the concentration of natural chemicals is is higher.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Makes sense. Right. So interesting. So we've talked about groundwater already a couple of times. I think it's important to define it or explain it a little bit. Because I don't when we say aquifer, yeah, groundwater, like we know how important that they are being on a well.

SPEAKER_04 11:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

And we think about it all the time. Like, well, maybe it's getting used up or the aquifer's low. But tell tell us in layman's like the average person, this maybe been always been on city water before. Maybe they just moved to the area.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

There we go.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

What do they need to know about groundwater and our aquifers? Sure thing in the area.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

So um, yeah, I I I often run in, I I used to teach this subject, and I'd ask my students before we got into it, like, draw a picture. What you think? What I say, groundwater, what are you imagining? And some would draw literally a river going on the ground, right? You know, it's water, water happens in rivers. Well, that's not the right image. The best image is imagine a big, huge box full of ping pong balls, all right? And those ping pong balls are rocks, and there's air space between those rocks. Okay. And if you have that in your mind, now imagine pouring water into that box without the ping pong balls floating away. If they remained in place and the water just filled the space between those rocks, well, you should be able to imagine at the top of the box, you know, maybe you're, you know, it's mostly air. Maybe there's a little bit of wetness stuck on the individual grains. Um, but at the bottom of the box, all of the air space is replaced by water. So that's what we'd say fully saturated. And somewhere in the middle of your box, you're gonna have a line of water. If it was a clear box that you're looking at, you'd have a line of water above which most of the air spaces are air or spaces are air, and below which all of the spaces are full of water. That is the water table. Okay, and that's exactly what happens in our re our areas. An aquifer is it's actually both a geologic term, but also a um it it's got legal definitions, but it's basically a body of rock or a geological formation. It doesn't have to be rock, it could be a sand layer, it could be something else, but it has enough um, it can supply water to a well in a useful way. Some layers of dirt and rock are um they're so well in in hydrogeology we call it tight, meaning the water moves through it so slowly that it can't produce enough water to be useful. Okay. You you'd have to put a lot of energy in. So an aquifer produces enough water to be useful, and it's it's one of these geologic units. And so the water table is where you first hit it if you're digging down into the ground. Um, but then you can actually go layer upon layer upon layer, almost like a stack of pancakes going down into the ground. And some layers have water and some layers don't. Um, but the shallowest is where you find the water table.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

So that's so a high water table closer to the surface.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Low water table, meaning dig a lot deeper to get down to it.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

And water, deep groundwater is always in communication with surface water. Okay. So um, if you look at something like Franz Lake, um you're actually seeing, like when you look at the lake surface, you're seeing the water table. Um, and actually, if you went into the ground at the side of the lake, imagine that box of ping pong balls, that's where you would see like the water table in the ground, right beside the lake, is at exactly the same elevation, or more or less right at the same elevation as the lake itself. So lakes are actually just where topography intersects the water table.

SPEAKER_03 15:32

Ah, I like that definition. Very good at explaining. Yeah, a good teacher.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

But you know, that then gets into it's it's why the Upper Arkansas Water Conservation District controls, uh, at least here in Chafee County, controls how much water I take out of the ground, or they they frankly allot me an amount of water a year, they meter how much water I use and keep track of that. Because if I take out too much, that's taking water out of the surface water, which is highly allocated. So that's the real delicate relationship between surface and groundwater.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Reminds me, I need to turn my meter reading. Yeah, yeah, right. I didn't do my spring meter reading and now it's June. Oh, I just forgot about it. There you go. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

So yeah. So building on all of that, wouldn't when what happens to the groundwater supplies when communities grow and develop when there's drought conditions like potentially this summer, when agricultural land is converted to residential development? What should property owners understand about the long-term sustainability of their wells?

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah, that's a really good question. And um it's a really good question. So um, as I mentioned, I get uh I have an augmentation certificate from the Upper Arkansas Water Conservation District. That guarantees me the right to access water, but it doesn't guarantee that there will be water. Okay, so I can have a well on my property. It doesn't say say that one more time.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

That's pretty important.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

It's a very important distinction. It it grants me the right to have a well on my property, but it doesn't guarantee that that well is going to produce water. Okay. So um in a drought, there's a couple of different things that that you've mentioned, and and some of these have already come true in our valley in some areas where people have a very shallow well, or maybe just the geological formation is such that when we get less rainwater, again, that rainwater trickles through the box of ping pong balls and recharges the groundwater. Um if that's happening at a lower rate and there's still people sucking water out of the ground, it's possible that the water table could drop below the entry point to your well. It's almost like you got a big um uh a big soda from um uh restaurant, and you only had the the straw halfway down into it, and you started drinking and drinking and drinking, and you know it's full of ice down there, and you actually drop the level of the soda below the bottom of your straw. Now, you and I would just push the straw deeper and keep drinking, and that is something that you can do, but it costs on the order of about a thousand dollars uh uh for 10 feet to go down to drill out your well. It's not uh, and probably I've got that price tag wrong.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Put it this way, it's I always tell clients it's fifty dollars a foot.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

That's a better that's a good calculation. If you if you're trying to get a well on a property, you can go to a neighbor and say, How deep is your well, or just look at the Division of Water Resources website, look up the local neighborhood's well documents and say, Okay, their well's a hundred feet deep, fifty dollars a foot. There's your number. Yep. So that's a I mean, that's a very rough.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

But that's kind of you gotta start somewhere, and looking at how deep your neighbor's well is a great place to start.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Because the water table is probably about the same across across that area most of the time. Yeah. Unless you're up in Maysville and then it's cuckoo. Just so you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yeah. So drought can cause somebody's well to go dry. Um, I have a shallow well, and when we bought our house, I knew that it was a shallow well, and I said to my wife, hey, we we may have to remount this well in the future if the water level dropped. No.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

What is what when you say shallow, what?

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Oh, well, what is it? Um, I think it's Are you less than a hundred? It's 140 to 180.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

See, mine's only 75.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah. So that would mine's very shallow. That would be that would be pretty shallow. But it depends on where you are.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Well, we've noticed this year.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Yeah. You have noticed this.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Are you like water pressure or yes, yeah?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

So yeah, hopefully get through this year, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

I think other people with similar depth wells are probably thinking the same thing because we've talked to our neighbors.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, you could go deeper, you know, but you know, uh, so the other the other question you asked is what happens with development. When I look out, um general rule of thumb. This there's hydrogeologists listening are gonna say it's not always true. And it's not always true.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

I don't know if we have any hydrogeologists listening, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

If your water, if you stand outside of your house, stand on your well, and look uphill, that's where your water is gonna be coming from. And when I do that at my house, I look, I'm looking across the road at a very large ranch that irrigates. All right. So probably if I had a tracer in, and I don't, nobody does, but if I could put like a uh drop of food coloring in that uh rancher's irrigation system, it's going down into the ground, moving horizontally and coming into my well. And I would see that that happen. Um, well, what happens, you know, like if that's a portion of my water supply, if that rancher were to sell her or his ranch and it becomes developed, well, suddenly that water is not being put back into the ground. Instead of being what we call recharge, again, that's pouring water into the box, um, that might get developed, and we put more straws down into that box and more people sucking out water. So it's kind of a one two punch. Less water going in, more water going out. That could definitely affect the depth of water that I'm drawing from and might require me to drill a new well. So development that's that's how development could affect things.

unknown 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

So we're really thinking about we have to be thoughtful about development in our valley and in other valleys in Colorado just because of this whole issue.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

I think something I've celebrated a bit is when I see developments going up and the cities actually annexing those areas into city water and sewer, because that means there's not more wells, holes being punched in the ground as you described it. So I know that a lot of people are like, oh, another development, or or the city's annexing more property, but they have to annex it to put on the city utilities. And it's it's a fine line that we we need to learn to balance. We not everybody could be on a well, we won't survive that way. And definitely not larger scale developments or big neighborhoods, big sprawling neighborhoods. You can't have 50 new wells out there and still expect, you know, there's some people that we have had on the podcast. Shout out to Wall Harder. You know, and he was on here and said something along the lines of there's a lot of water down there, but a lot of water ends up going rather quickly when you have a lot of development as we have here.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

And I have also heard that there's a lot of groundwater available. Um, I just heard um um Greg Felt give a really good talk to Garna on, and he's now the uh the head of uh Upper Arkansas Water Conservation District. Really great talk. We should find where that was recorded. I know it was recorded. Um, but yeah, he um he he he he was talking about uh the the the groundwater and when he served as commissioner, I guess the USGS did a study on our that's the US Geological Survey, did a study on our aquifer system. And so I know that our commissioners have looked into this in the past. And if I remember from the the new land use code, there's supposed to be a water sustainability evaluation that goes on every time a new subdivision is proposed. Like, are we going to impact um the wells next door or overly suck the water dry? Um, so like at least we're asking about some of those questions. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Yeah. That's really interesting. Uh Greg is a guest. We plan to have him as a future guest on the podcast. Hopefully he'll say yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

He's he's a smart dude. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

So shifting a little bit to mining, which you also know a lot about, um, and it's still related to water, but Colorado's mining history has helped build many of our mountain towns that are here today. What should property owners know about the environmental legacy of historic mines, mills, tailing pile, tailings piles, and other former mining sites? Like, how does that impact all of this?

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Yeah, um it some challenges. It's it's not always easy to find uh information about historic mine sites. Um they operated at a point in time where nobody was requiring people to keep records, you know, when there were no environmental laws, pretty much anything before the Clean Water Act of the I'm gonna get the date wrong, but I think 1969, like before that, like you didn't have to keep track of these various things. You could dump garbage on the ground and that's also when they're using asbestos, yeah. I mean, a lot of things changed then, and so it's you know, it can be hard to find this, these legacy sites, you know. Um, and they pop up in weird locations. Like I was talking with somebody about how in BV near the um uh soccer fields, um at there used to be uh a tailings facility. So maybe I'll just explain. Um when you're mining, um you're obviously after the gold or the silver or the copper, you know, whatever resource it's gonna be. Um, but that is surrounded by, I mean, you're not pulling out like pure varieties of whatever element, it's surrounded by what we call waste rock, okay? Not a very technical term. Um but um that usually, especially for the uh old-time miners, got like it's uneconomical, it's heavy, it's in the way, and so it gets dumped as probably as close to the mine as possible. And you can see waste rock piles. Uh they they they mark every mine across the state of Colorado, every historic mine. Um uh driving here, I go by the Sedalia mine, which is just off of 291 on the right hand side going north, and you can see, you know, piles of rock like just emerge out of nowhere. Those are waste rock dumps. So there's waste rock, um, there's ore, and you're gonna take that ore, which is the rock that has the concentration of whatever you want, and you bring it to a mill. And at a mill, it gets crushed. Um, it then goes through probably some kind of physical or chemical treatment. Uh, just the act of crushing it is a physical treatment. But um, they used to pour chemicals on it. They they still do in modern mining. Um, but the result of that uh processing is what we call tailings. And um there are, again, those tailings were usually dumped right next to the mill. And um you can find them in a lot of different sites around Colorado, including this spot and VV that I was talking about. There's there's tailings deposited there. There's um uh other varieties of mine waste, sometimes the tailings is an initial form, and you bring that to a smelter, like we have at Smeltertown, and you roast that ore. And what comes out the back end is this, it almost looks like black lava. Um, and that's what we call slag. And you can, if you paddle down the Arkansas River past Smeltertown, you'll see the slag. It's just right there on the side of the river. Um, not necessarily overly reactive, you know, but it is a variety of mine waste. Drive into Leadville heading north, and you'll see a big mountain of, or I shouldn't say mountain. It's about a 20-foot-high ridge that's all black, that slag. Um, so that's another type of mine waste. And often if you look along our railroad tracks, sometimes you see the entire railroad base is made up of slag.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

If you bike along those railroad tracks, you end up covered in the slack. The slag. Yeah. There's like black stuff all over your skin. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

So there's different types of mine wastes, and it depending on what they were mining, depending on the process, they each one could be could be benign or could possibly cause a risk.

SPEAKER_03 29:18

And you I I heard you do a talk a couple years ago about rivers and and how this impacts rivers.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah. Um, so um we are really lucky in this town to have uh Jason Willis. He works for Trout Unlimited, and he is the national mine reclamation um person for Trout Unlimited. Of course, they want to see more trout in streams, and so he goes out to abandoned mine sites and tries to clean them up. And he just gave a really interesting talk to the local chapter in BV about a couple of these issues. And so uh these these tailings deposits tend to be very flat. Um, you know, literally, a mill was beside it and they they have a flat pile of sand right outside of the mill. Well, that gets grown over um with grass, with time, or or maybe it doesn't. But if a river goes by that, it can cut the bank and all of those fine-grained materials end up in the water and they can release metals. And so Trout Unlimited right now is doing a cleanup of some zinc tailings that are right up along the Arkansas River near I probably am going to get it wrong. I think it's Hayden Ranch that's just north of Twin Lakes. They're doing a cleanup there of some zinc tailings because they were put right beside the river. Um, why would mines put stuff right beside rivers? Well, they often have to use water in their mining process. In fact, all mines use a ridiculous amount of water. They have to to move materials around, and what a better place to discharge the waste, but right beside a river. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

So you often find this least expensive, Brad. They're just gonna dump it there.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Exactly. It's why the why the waste rock is right by the entrance to the mine because it's least expensive. Why is the you know tailings facility right next to the riverbank? Well, they probably just spilled it out. The river is the lowest elevation usually in a region. It's certainly in Chafee County. The lowest point of elevation is the river everywhere in the county. And so if you're discharging waste, if you want to get rid of stuff, you're gonna put it at a low point. Wow, yeah, and so that ends up being right by the riverbank.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

So you've talked about this a little bit already, but Leadville's currently looking at um cleaning up some mine waste as well. And and you know, there's these sites all over. When when they do a cleanup like that, and we're downstream from Leadville. So I have read about this. Um like what what kind of risks are we looking at for are we mostly worried about the river? Do we also need to worry about our groundwater? Um, sh like what and what kind of, I don't know if you know this, but what kind of say do we even have because it's not technically even in our county or local municipality. It's not our jurisdiction, but we can be affected by it.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

This is a really good question. And uh I think um, you know, you're talking about the issue where there's some historic mine waste. It I think it's tailings, and they want to reprocess the tailings to recover gold from it. Um, and I think this is a a great issue because it this is honestly not the last time we're gonna have this discussion. Um more and more, the US Geological Survey has actually put in a lot of studies into looking at old mine waste and to see if we can recover metals from mine waste. So rather than digging, going to a landscape that's uh you know, never seen a shovel before and digging a brand new mine, can we go to places that have been disturbed in the past? They're already disturbed, the waste is sitting there, and can we collect those metals? You know, and so like many issues that like that there could be a positive in that, you know, a big positive. Um, this particular mine has also thought about removing. Um, so one of one of the problem childs in mining across the world is a mineral called pyrite. Um, you'll know it as fool's gold. Anytime you go into a gift shop, seemingly anywhere, there's a box full of fool's gold. Okay. Um, that is one of the most common um uh uh two of the elements on our periodic table, iron and sulfur. It's one of the most common iron sulfur minerals on the planet, and it's enriched at mine sites, typically. Big generalizations here. Um, when that's exposed to oxygen and water, it forms sulfuric acid. And in sulfuric acid, you get very high concentrations of metals. The lower the pH, generally speaking, the higher the concentrations of copper, lead, zinc, cobalt, cadmium, blah blah di blah, a whole bunch of the periodic table increases in concentration. There's some exceptions, but that let's just take that as a as a general thing. So um one thing this mining company has proposed is that the the leftover gold that they're looking at is bound up with these sulfides. And so by reprocessing these uh sulfides, that's the iron sulfur mineral, um, by reprocessing the waste rock, they might remove those sulfides and actually leave the area better than it is right now. So um those are some positives. Um, but you know, like anything, um, it there's there's always the potential to do it um better and to do it worse. I have not seen this company's plans. I can't speak to the detail. Um, but I know, yeah, one should always be asking these questions, you know, like what's the effect going to be on water? You know, um, every company it knows that that question's coming, you know, and they try their best to minimize the impact. But we should know in general, though, like that question, be it this mine in Leadville or maybe it's somewhere else, you know. Um, yeah, I know that in the summer I've seen a helicopter flying up and down our valley with a big long um pipe on the nose, and that's doing geophysical surveys and it's looking for more metal deposits in this area, I suspect. So um the mining has happened here in the past, it's probably gonna happen here in the future. It is going on up at Climax, uh, which is not terribly far away. And there are better ways to do it. Climate Climax seems to do a really good job managing their water. So it is possible to have mining and manage the water impacts well. Um, and unfortunately, there's a lot of examples where it hasn't been done well, and that's what sticks in most people's minds. It's like we don't want environmental disasters from mining. It is possible, and no one denies that it's puts us on guard and makes us make sure that it gets done well if it if it gets done.

SPEAKER_02 37:08

Yeah, that's interesting. I think the technology has improved so much too that when you're talking about going back to sites and doing cleanup, but also looking for those metals again, it's like, well, that they've got to have a better way to do it now than they did a hundred years ago.

SPEAKER_04 37:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

So that's hopeful to me that it won't damage the environment, damage our water.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

But and and it's also worth noting that, you know, uh probably back in the 80s, there was like uh a a dead zone in the Arkansas River south of Leadville, you know, due to all of the mining. And today it's a gold medals trout stream, you know. Okay and yeah, that it it these systems, I mean, I'm not saying it's perfect, but you know, it has come back and rebounded. And so has Leadville. So has Leadville.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Yeah, it was a rough place with a lot of mental and physical health issues because of the water for many, many years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 38:12

So looking ahead, if you could give one piece of advice to property owners, local governments, community leaders about protecting water resources in our communities in Colorado, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 38:27

So to fellow well owners, get your water tested. Um, I think you know, you don't have to do it that often, but it's a healthy thing to do and make sure that you're getting like the full spectrum. I I didn't answer this question before, but the state has uh a water testing service you could go to. It's the Colorado State University Soil and Water Lab. Um, it's actually right next door. They hold the stock show in Denver. That's where their lab is located. Beautiful facility. Um, but they offer reasonable prices for drinking water testing. They've got a panel that they look at. There's also private companies that get that could do water testing here in Salida. Um Culligan is somebody that, you know, they're right down on Oak Street. Um, they do water testing, and I've seen their results. They do a full panel of, well, I I would say um, you know, you're never gonna have everything tested, right? You know, because there's just thousands of things you could test for. But like they have uh what look to me to be uh about a hundred or so different analytes that get looked at. And you know, the more you could look at stuff, the better. Um, the one caution if you go with a private company, they are always going to be trying to sell you something after. So, oh, you need a water softer, oh you need a you know, reverse osmosis unit, you know, like that's but you know, you just bear that in mind, you know, and uh discuss the results before, you know, making a heavy investment based on those findings, you know. Um, so yeah, that would be my advice to well owners. My advice to the county, um, you know, I I would love to see water quality as something that gets factored into this water sustainability. Um, when we we are looking to develop a new area when it comes before our um commissioners and they're debating it, I would like to see a full panel of water quality. Um, sometimes, again, um I I've seen examples. Um, and I say this, I used to be on our uh planning and zoning commission. I could see examples where the request was made for water quality and they came back with just the biological sample. And oh, there's no biological issues in here. Well, that's great, but you're digging a very deep well, and we should all be aware in our county we have naturally high arsenic levels in our groundwater. Um, and you know, that may or may not be an issue, depends on the concentration in your well. But yeah, some of my neighbors have shown me their results, and they have very high, like above the drinking water standard levels of arsenic. And they indeed have gotten reverse osmosis, which is a treatment that'll take that out. Um, so it's something to be very aware of. Um, our bodies pretty much need a little bit of every element on the periodic table, with three exceptions: arsenic, mercury, uh, lead. We don't need any of those elements.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

Two of them out of the three of those locally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

You know, uh, we have we have arsenic naturally occurring in this valley. So that would be my advice for leadership. Let's make sure that we're we're one requesting water samples, and two, that we're like really digging into that and maybe even seeking out the public health office and getting their view before you know allowing, or or maybe not before allowing, but as part of the decision process. Should a development go in here? How deep is the well gonna be? How is it gonna infect water quantity, which is something that goes into sustainability? But what is the water quality? I I think that would be a very good step forward.

SPEAKER_02 42:35

I think that's great. Oh, love it. Yeah, too. Very helpful. So there to wrap up, yeah. One final question. Is there like a project or something that you did with work that made you think about all of this in a new way that you could share with us? Can you think of like a favorite story that you something you worked on or investigated or even maybe taught about when you were a teacher?

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Yeah, so I I used to teach at the State University of New York College at Oneanta, and I would bring uh I think seven or eight times I brought undergraduate students to Guatemala to look at a lake there. And that lake actually had um it's it's Lake Atitlan, which is a pretty oh, I've been there, yeah. Yeah, it's really beautiful lake, it's gorgeous. Um, but it does have elevated arsenic in the water, and it also has E. coli in the water, and it the the lake itself is surrounded by um a dozen different um indigenous communities that like literally trace their roots back to the Maya, you know. They're um they're speakers of Sutuhil and uh Cachical and Languages that are that are the UN even lists as like dying languages because they're just not being spoken anymore. So going there has a very uh culturally valuable, uh, I don't know, emotional, I would say, experience. It's very, very beautiful area on many levels. Anyhow, we brought students to collect water samples and uh yeah, to look at the water chemistry. And um at the end of our week-long stay at the lake, the students would actually go to uh people's houses and we would install water filters. Now these are very rudimentary. Imagine actually, you don't have to imagine like a Home Depot bucket, five gallons um on top of like two of them stacked on top of each other, and in the middle of one bucket is a filter that kind of drips down into the underlying bucket. And all that filter did was remove fecal coliform. Okay, so it got rid of E. coli. But for these communities, they're drinking out of the lake, um, and um the water is elevated in in in E. coli and fecal coliform, and little kids literally uh have mortality issues because of this, you know, again, if chronic diarrhea. And so I think for me, the the seeing my students learn how to install these filters, which wasn't complicated, but you know, that that was a brilliant thing that it's not complicated. They they could install it. You we could all install them, they're very simple systems, but the look on their faces as they're you know in someone's home, literally with a corrugated iron roof propped up against a mud wall, um, these people probably make about seven dollars a day. Uh, and they have lots of little kids who are all running around and you know, playing with my students, and you know, they're setting up this water system. And then we got back to our kind of place where we were staying and sitting around talking with the students about the experience, and like everybody just got choked up about it, you know, just because it was like, wow, you know, we read about this stuff all the time, but you don't often get to actually make an impact on somebody's life. And that was that was really impactful. They could see it as they were installing it, they could see the little kid that's gonna be drinking this water that we've now increased the chances of mortality of like having a good wow.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Yeah, what a great story.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

So that was my that's probably my number one um, yeah, most most uh most relevant, I would say. That's that's by far the number one uh issue, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:59

Thanks for sharing. Yeah, that's really cool. Well, we've got some quick rapid fire questions. Bring them on. They're mostly fun. Another sip of water. Yeah, no, they're they're mostly fun, just to get to know you a little bit. Right up. All right, so land with a view or walkable to downtown.

SPEAKER_00 47:16

If you were to live you've been to my house.

SPEAKER_03 47:19

I know. But I have to ask the question.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Definitely land with a view.

SPEAKER_02 47:23

I just quintessential salida question, too. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

I love downtown, don't get me wrong, and I often wish I was closer, but gosh, uh I grew up in Massachusetts. We don't have really views. So uh to have a view was a big thing.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

Yeah, for sure. So, what was the first job that you ever had?

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Oh, my first job was uh both working, well, technically my um like getting through college kind of job, or we've had people answer everything from like when they were 14 till to like first kind of professional job.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

So what's interesting?

SPEAKER_00 48:04

I've been I've been uh getting through college. I was a janitor once summer. I've been a bus boy at restaurants, um, but probably my first real job, like uh where I uh got paid decently, uh I I in college, so in grad school, I had a friend who was an exploration geologist, and they fly all around the world and dig up rocks and try to tell companies where to go mine. And this guy had just gotten back from the Brooks range of Alaska and was showing me his slides. And I remember saying, Jeff, if there's ever an opportunity to do this, just sign me up. You know, it was one of those flippant comments you make when, you know, and anyhow, a week goes by and he calls me and says there's an opportunity in Alaska. And so I went uh very close to Sitka, Alaska, and I flew on a helicopter every day to an island in the middle of nowhere, and walked around and literally bagged dirt samples in a grid, and that was my job for a month, and it was super fun and uh exciting and risky and all those big adventure things, but things are in your 20s, yeah. Yeah, exactly. That was, I could say, my first job.

SPEAKER_03 49:21

That's cool. So, what would you be doing if you if if money were no object and you could do anything with your time professionally?

SPEAKER_00 49:30

Yeah, you know, if my boss ever hears this, block your ears, but I I would go back to teaching, I think that would be a hell of a lot of fun. I I uh if money wasn't an issue, uh mortgage payments and whatnot, you know. But yeah, I really I really enjoy teaching. And I I I do that a little bit uh occasionally for CMC, but I would probably uh do see myself doing more of that.

SPEAKER_02 49:54

Nice. You're good at that. Until really briefly, just because we haven't mentioned it yet on the podcast, your current role. Your current job. You said block your ears, boss, but who's your boss?

SPEAKER_00 50:05

Right. I work for SRK, which is a global engineering firm that specializes in helping the mining industry, uh, getting permits. Uh, we have geologists that look at the mineral resources and try to put a dollar amount on what's in the ground. I work on the side of helping the um management of different mine wastes. So, you know, this rock is uh it's got a lot of that pyrite in it, uh, and you want to manage it this way. You want to put it here, you don't want to put it over there, you want to keep it away from water and oxygen, you don't want to put it, you know, on the surface. Great.

SPEAKER_02 50:46

We're glad you're helping them. Yeah, yeah. It's important. Interesting and important, yeah. Yeah. Um, then what's your personal motto? Do you have one?

SPEAKER_00 50:56

Oh boy. Personal motto or something you say to yourself, baby.

SPEAKER_03 51:01

Something that you're like.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

Um well, I I like to be really enthusiastic. I don't know that I have a particular motto that I remind myself uh, but I I do I like being passionate about the stuff that I do. And uh whether it's um oh jeepers, you know, uh I don't know any kind of teaching that I do. I I just I find I hopefully by being excited that that spills over into other people and helps them get excited. That's perfect, you know.

SPEAKER_02 51:44

Yeah, I don't think anyone's ever used jeepers on the podcast before. So I will always remember that word associated with you, Devin. Jeepers, Devons. So thank you. Made my day.

SPEAKER_03 51:58

Yeah, where can people find you on to learn more about this?

SPEAKER_00 52:04

Um so I I'm on the uh the board of Garna, you know. So probably the easiest way could be going through Garna. Um, and if you don't mind me giving a shameless plug, I will be teaching.

SPEAKER_03 52:18

Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

Yeah, uh, I'm going to be teaching a what's in our water class for Garna in August. Perfect. Dates to be finalized. Um, I that's on me. They've been asking for a long time, and I just need to give them some dates. But we've centered on, I think, early August, and it would probably be what I'm envisioning is like a Thursday afternoon lecture just to kind of give you the nuts and bolts, which I know is the the kind of boring bit, but it's like just to remind ourselves of why we all took chemistry and you know what what that meant, you know. Um, but then uh a day trip, probably driving up to Leadville and looking at some of the cool stuff that you can see up there. There's one big puddle that's you know a dark maroon color and has a pH of two, which is ridiculously acidic. But then again, mind you, Coca-Cola is also pH too. So um, so we drank that. Yeah, okay. But when they transport Coca-Cola, it has to have all these hazardous waste symbols on the side. They don't tell you that when you buy it.

SPEAKER_02 53:28

That's crazy. I did not know that.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:31

Awesome. I will tell my kids. Yeah. Yeah. We really appreciate you taking the time. Learned a lot. And yeah, I think it will inform things that I talk to people about and share with real estate clients in the future. Cool. And we'll watch for your the work you're doing with Garner. We really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

Yeah. Oh, no worries. No worries. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

Thank you. This episode is sponsored by Heart of the Rockies Home at Home Park Preferred Realty. We do real estate with Heart in the Heart of the Rockies and serve Colorado Mountain communities working to help clients navigate real estate in these unique towns. Whether you're buying, selling, or exploring your options, our goal is to make every step feel informed, supported, and straightforward.