Moore Engineering’s report to Calhan’s trustees puts the work at roughly $12.7 million to $16.5 million, by the Independent’s count of its estimates. Who would pay for most of it has not been decided, although the town’s code says that must happen before an annexation.
Calhan asked Moore Engineering, the town’s engineering consultant, what its water, sewer, drainage and road systems would need if the town annexed North Tree, the 467-home subdivision Smith Land Development & Co. has proposed on 96 acres at the town’s northwest corner. Moore’s answer, a 55-page report, was presented to the Board of Trustees at a workshop on Oct. 29 and posted on the town’s website the next day. The town’s wells, once repaired, could serve 250 to 300 of the homes; a new well would be needed for the rest; and Moore recommends replacing the town’s 1995 sewage lagoons with a mechanical treatment plant. The Independent’s Oct. 27 report on the annexation covers the water dispute behind it.
Moore’s planning-level estimates add up to about $12.7 million with new turn lanes on U.S. 24, or $16.5 million with a roundabout instead. Moore recommends that the developer pay for the water-supply work. For most of the rest, including a $6.7 million sewer plant, no document the Independent has read assigns the cost. Calhan’s code says that where “exceptional costs may be required” to serve an annexation, “financial arrangements to extend streets, water or sewer mains shall be agreed upon prior to annexation.” The town said on Oct. 30 that “no decisions have been made.”
The work and who would pay
| Work | Estimate | Who would pay, according to the documents |
|---|---|---|
| Water supply | ||
| Clean the town’s three deep wells and install new, deeper pumps | $600,000 | The developer, Moore recommends: water-supply upgrades “at the applicant’s cost” |
| Drill at least one new well, probably in the Arapahoe aquifer | $1,860,000 | The developer, Moore assumes. The town’s water attorneys say work to serve more than about 71 homes is “at the Applicant’s expense” |
| Backup power at the wells | $100,000 | Not assigned; Moore recommends it for the town’s system generally |
| Controls and automation (SCADA) | Under way | The town, as a project already in progress |
| A well site of at least 1.5 acres inside North Tree | Land | The developer, under the town’s 2026 water ordinance |
| Water lines | ||
| Two 8-inch connections to the town’s mains and the mains inside North Tree | No estimate | The developer: the code puts main extensions “at the expense of those desiring said service” |
| Sewage | ||
| A mechanical treatment plant for 200,000 gallons a day, built in two stages | $6,730,000 | Not assigned. New connections pay a system development charge that the code says “partially” defrays capital costs |
| The sewer main from North Tree to the plant | No estimate | The developer: the code makes owners and developers responsible for sewer facilities “in and through” their property |
| Reduce leakage from the plant’s gravel filter pond | No estimate | The town; Moore says it should be done “regardless of the annexation process” |
| Drainage | ||
| A detention pond of about 4 acres inside North Tree | No estimate | The developer: the town’s subdivision rules require detention storage |
| A 36-inch culvert and drainage work on McClasky Road | $500,000 | Not assigned. The plan defers the McClasky culvert to the preliminary-plan stage |
| Roads | ||
| Turn lanes on U.S. 24 | $1,330,000 | The holder of the state highway access permit, which the town decides can be the town, the developer or both; CDOT told the developer to work that out with the town |
| Crystola Street intersection work | $810,000 | Not assigned |
| Local street connections | $750,000 | Not assigned |
| Or, in place of the turn-lane and intersection work: a single-lane roundabout at U.S. 24, Crystola and 8th | $6,000,000 | Not assigned |
| Paving McClasky Road | No estimate | Undecided; the plan says it will be “determined at preliminary plan stage” |
| Totals, by the Independent’s count | ||
| With the turn lanes | $12,680,000 | |
| With the roundabout | $16,540,000 | |
Moore calls its figures “planning-level opinions of probable cost” and says the assessment “is subject to revision based on receipt of future information and input from the public, the Town Board, and the applicant.” It does not price everything: the mains inside North Tree, the sewer line to the plant, the detention pond and the paving of McClasky Road carry no estimate.
Water
North Tree would use about 167.5 acre-feet of water a year, Moore estimates, at Calhan’s new standard of 0.35 acre-feet a home plus park irrigation. The water under the land that can be developed economically is 21.7 acre-feet a year, enough for about 62 homes. Moore puts the shortfall at 134.8 acre-feet a year; that figure counts water in the deepest aquifer, the Laramie-Fox Hills, which the same report says may be impractical to develop. Without it, the gap is about 146.
The town’s three deep wells could cover part of the gap, if the trustees agree to let North Tree use some of the town’s water and the developer pays a fee in its place. Moore puts the wells’ combined capacity at about 275 gallons a minute, but says reaching that reliably would take about $600,000 of cleaning and new, deeper pumps. One of them, the Railroad well, would have to pump 155 gallons a minute, above the 100 its permit allows, which would need a new order from the state’s Ground Water Commission. On a peak summer day the town and North Tree together would need about 341. “Assuming successful rehabilitation,” Moore writes, the town “may be able to serve approximately 250 to 300” of North Tree’s homes. The plan “cannot be served solely with existing Town Laramie-Fox Hills aquifer wells,” so at least one new well, probably in the Arapahoe aquifer, would be needed, at about $1.86 million.
Whether the town lends its water at all is undecided. Moore says it is “currently unknown” whether the board will agree, and the town said on Oct. 30 that “further discussion will be taking place regarding the option of water fee-in-lieu.” In August the developer’s lawyer, Eric Trout, proposed $1,500 for each acre-foot of annual demand that the land’s own water cannot cover, which he called the value of “raw nontributary Laramie-Fox Hills groundwater.” At Calhan’s 0.35 acre-feet a home, that is about $525 a house. The town’s water attorneys recommended in September that the town reject the rate.
It is a fraction of what towns and districts nearby charge. Monument’s town council set its fee in lieu of water rights at $30,000 an acre-foot in February, by a 7-0 vote, up from $10,000, and lets the fee cover no more than 10 percent of a project’s water demand; North Tree’s gap is about 87 percent of its demand. Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District charges $34,500 an acre-foot when a development needs more of the district’s own Denver Basin groundwater than its standard allotment. Greeley, whose decision to stop pricing its fee off Colorado-Big Thompson water Trout cited, now charges $57,000 an acre-foot. Covering North Tree’s 146-acre-foot gap would cost about $219,000 at Trout’s rate, $4.4 million at Monument’s, $5 million at Woodmoor’s and $8.3 million at Greeley’s, by the Independent’s calculation.
The town’s two 350,000-gallon tanks would hold enough for both, Moore found, though not with one tank out of service for maintenance. The wells and tanks are run by hand. Only the Railroad well has some automation, only one tank has a level monitor, and no well has a permanent generator.
Sewage
Calhan’s sewage plant, built in 1995, is three earthen basins, two of them aerated, followed by a gravel filter pond. It ran at about 75 percent of its permitted 80,000 gallons a day in 2025, Moore found; the state requires planning for an expansion at 80 percent. Up to 56 percent of what flows in does not flow out. Moore suspects leakage from the unlined filter pond, plus evaporation, and says the leak should be reduced “regardless of the annexation process.”
North Tree would add about 89,100 gallons a day, Moore estimates, more than doubling the flow; with room for growth and wet weather, it sizes a new plant at 200,000. Expanding the lagoons as the 1995 design allowed would reach only about 160,000 gallons a day, and that kind of plant “cannot meet the future effluent limits” without added treatment. Those limits, on ammonia, nitrogen, chlorine and E. coli, take effect March 1, 2029, whether or not North Tree is built. Moore’s Aug. 4 memo to the board said the existing plant is “not designed to remove these nutrients.” Evaporation ponds would need about 114 acres; the roughly 50 acres the town recently bought next to the plant would not hold them. Moore recommends a mechanical package plant, built in two 100,000-gallon stages, at about $6.73 million for both.
Moore does not say who would pay for the plant. Calhan charges each new sewer connection a system development charge, which under the town’s code goes “to partially defray the cost of capital improvement” of the system. The water tap fee is meant to “assign growth-related system capacity costs to new development, rather than shifting such costs to the Town’s existing customers.”
Streets and fire engines
Every street in North Tree’s development plan, local and collector alike, is drawn as a 24-foot paved “mat” in a 52-foot right of way. Michael Gates, the Calhan Fire Protection District’s fire marshal, set out in an email to the Independent on Oct. 29 what the district’s code asks of streets like these. Set against the plan, as in the table below, the streets clear the code’s 20-foot minimum, with 4 feet to spare. Parking is another matter. The plan’s streets are 24 feet wide; the district’s code allows parking on one side only at 26 feet and on both sides at 32, so under that rule no North Tree street, as drawn, could have cars parked on it. The longer of two dead-end streets, about 530 to 690 feet by the Independent’s measurement, is also drawn at 24 feet, where the code requires 26 for a dead end that long.
| Requirement | What the code says | What the plan shows | How they compare |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clear width | At least 20 feet unobstructed | A 24-foot paved “mat” on every street | Meets the minimum |
| Parking | Streets 20 to 26 feet wide: no parking on either side. 26 to 32 feet: one side. 32 feet or wider: both sides | 24 feet | No street parking on either side, as drawn |
| Dead ends | Over 150 feet needs a turnaround; 501 to 750 feet must be 26 feet wide. Calhan’s code caps cul-de-sacs at 400 feet | Two dead ends on the north street, about 290 to 450 feet (west) and 530 to 690 feet (east) by the Independent’s measurement, both 24 feet wide | The west one fits the fire code. The east one is narrower than the district requires and longer than the town allows |
| Turnaround size | A cul-de-sac 90 feet across with curb and gutter, 100 feet without. Calhan’s code: at least a 55-foot radius | Drawn as right-of-way circles about 120 feet across; the paved bulb is not shown | Cannot tell from the plan |
| A second way in | More than 30 homes need two separate approved access roads, at least half the site’s diagonal apart | Three entrances, two on McClasky Road and one to Crystola Street, about 1,670 to 2,400 feet apart against about 1,550 required, by the Independent’s measurement | Spacing meets; two entrances depend on McClasky Road |
| Surface | All-weather, able to carry a 75,000-pound fire engine; gravel only “as approved by the fire code official” | McClasky Road is unpaved; paving is “to be determined at preliminary plan stage” | Undecided |
The plan does not show curbs or gutters, so whether 24 feet is the full width the district would measure is not clear. Two of the three entrances are on McClasky Road, which Kimley-Horn’s 2024 traffic study describes as unpaved. The district’s code allows gravel for fire access only “as approved by the fire code official,” and the plan leaves paving McClasky “to be determined at preliminary plan stage.” Residents have already complained about the street that traffic from McClasky would use to reach town. At the Oct. 22 hearing Peggy Hampton said Denver Street, which some residents call Golden, “has been for the last six years, a washboard road,” and a written comment in the town’s October 2025 public-comment summary said “the road is a mess now.”
Which code would govern inside town limits is less clear on paper. Calhan’s own code adopts the 2018 edition of the International Fire Code and does not adopt the appendix that sets the parking and dead-end rules. State law lets a fire district’s code apply inside a town only when the town adopts it by resolution. The district’s website says the town “recognizes” the district’s code; the Independent found no such resolution in the town’s 2025 and 2026 board packets.
Gates does not treat the plan as final. A first concept, he wrote, “is often designed to illustrate the maximum potential use of a property.” The 475 homes that five to the acre would yield on 95 acres is “only a starting point, not necessarily a realistic or approvable development plan,” and the number “may change considerably” once streets, emergency access, drainage and utilities are laid out. Moore’s report adds that the town’s planner estimates Calhan’s 7,500-square-foot minimum lot, with park land, would allow about 463 lots “before streets, drainage, and utilities.” Gates’s comments “were not intended as opposition to annexation or development,” he wrote, but the plan “will need to demonstrate compliance with our adopted fire code before it can be approved.”
Water for firefighting is in better shape inside North Tree than in parts of town. Kimley-Horn’s model of the town’s pipes, which Moore reviewed, finds that North Tree’s own hydrants could deliver 1,500 gallons a minute through two new 8-inch connections. Ten of the town’s existing hydrants cannot, and connecting North Tree would leave two more just short.
Where the storm water would go
The North Tree site drains to the north and east. Kimley-Horn’s preliminary analysis, which Moore reviewed, counts 128 acres draining through the property, including 38 acres to the west, and finds that once built, the site would shed water in a 100-year storm up to 270 percent faster than it does now. Its answer is a detention pond of about 4 acres that would hold about 14.7 acre-feet and release about 105 cubic feet a second, less than the 181 the land sheds today. Moore notes that the volume of runoff “will increase” all the same and, if not managed, “may exacerbate existing drainage and flooding concerns in downstream areas.”
Downstream is Balsick land. The plan puts the pond on the north edge of the site, against McClasky Road and beside an existing 24-inch culvert under the road. Placed on the county’s parcel map, the culvert’s north end opens onto land owned by Adam M. Balsick, and the ground there falls away. On federal lidar elevation data, it lies about 2 feet below the lowest point of the pond site 120 feet north of the road, about 10 feet below it 1,000 feet out and about 22 feet below it 2,000 feet out. FEMA’s flood map shows the swale that runs from there to the creek as a 1-percent-annual-chance flood zone. The zone covers about 78 acres of Adam Balsick’s land and about a third of the six-acre parcel on the road owned by Bailey and Garrett Balsick. Garrett Balsick has said that when the pond drains, “it will make my entire hayfield a bog.” Moore’s report describes the site’s runoff taking a different route, east along McClasky to the culvert where the creek crosses the road. Either way it reaches the creek, which runs about 2 miles through Adam Balsick’s land, part of it held with Kristin Balsick, on its way to Big Sandy Creek.
Elevation shows where water would run; it cannot show whether a 100-year storm would flood that land. That depends on where the pond’s outlet goes, how fast and for how long it releases, and what the culverts can carry, and none of that has been designed. The plan marks only a “potential location for stormwater detention.” The Independent found no drainage report in the county’s file on the annexation or in the town’s records, and Moore does not say which culvert its $500,000 McClasky job would replace. Calhan’s annexation standards say storm drainage “shall be considered prior to annexation to ensure that flooding problems within and adjoining the area proposed for annexation will not be increased by development of the tract.”
U.S. 24
North Tree’s traffic would reach U.S. 24 at the five-way junction of the highway, Crystola Street and 8th Street. Kimley-Horn’s traffic study calls for an eastbound left-turn lane on the highway there, and the Colorado Department of Transportation recommended considering right-turn lanes as well, which Moore endorses. CDOT has also said the five-way junction may pose long-term traffic and safety problems as traffic grows, Moore’s report says. Moore prices turn lanes, intersection work and local street connections at about $2.9 million in all. A single-lane roundabout, an option the town’s comprehensive plan raises, would cost about $6.75 million with the same street connections.
What the documents leave open
The developer’s plan, the engineers’ report and the town’s rules leave many questions unanswered. The plan does not settle how many homes the land will hold: it shows 467 on lots of about 6,000 square feet, against a town minimum of 7,500 and the planner’s estimate of about 463 lots before any streets. Nor does it say whether its 24-foot streets include curb and gutter or where cars would park, whether McClasky Road will be paved and its creek crossing rebuilt, where the pond would release its water and for how long, or where a well site of the 1.5 acres the town requires would go. Kimley-Horn attributed a figure of 325 acre-feet a year for the town’s wells to Moore, but none of the Moore reports the Independent has read contains it. Moore’s report leaves open whether the trustees will let North Tree draw on the town’s wells at all, and at what fee; whether the repaired wells can reach the pumping rates Moore estimates, one of them above its permit; and how much water the aquifers under the site can physically produce, which Moore calls “relatively unknown.” No document says who would pay for the sewer plant or the McClasky culvert, or whether the town or the developer would hold the state permit for the highway work. On the town’s side, it is not settled which fire code would govern North Tree’s streets inside town limits, or whether the “financial arrangements” and drainage review that Calhan’s annexation standards require will be in place before the trustees vote. And none of the later documents the Independent has read includes the title opinion, conservation plan or state water-rights determination that the town’s water attorneys said in September had not been provided.
What happens next
The town said on Oct. 30 that the report has been uploaded, that discussion of a water fee in lieu will follow and that “no decisions have been made.” The town’s minutes page had not posted minutes from the Oct. 29 workshop as of the evening of Oct. 30. The Planning and Development Committee resumes its hearing on North Tree’s development plan at 6 p.m. Nov. 19 at the VFW hall, and the trustees’ eligibility hearing is Dec. 7.
Methodology
The $12.7 million and $16.5 million totals are the Independent’s sums of the estimates in Moore’s Tables 2, 6, 9 and 10: $2.56 million for water supply, $6.73 million for the sewer plant, $500,000 for drainage, and either $2.89 million for the turn-lane and intersection work or $6.75 million for the roundabout scenario. The fee figures multiply the 146-acre-foot gap, 167.5 acre-feet of demand minus 21.7 of economically usable supply, by $1,500, $30,000, $34,500 and $57,000; the 87 percent is 146 divided by 167.5. Fees elsewhere are not always for the same thing: Monument’s and Greeley’s are for water rights alone, and Woodmoor’s buys an allotment of the district’s groundwater, with facilities charged separately. Street lengths and the spacing of entrances were measured from the drawn scale of the development plan’s sheet 2. Elevations are from the U.S. Geological Survey’s 1-meter lidar elevation model of eastern Colorado (2018), which shows bare ground and does not include culverts. The pond and culvert positions were placed on El Paso County’s parcel map from the plan and the annexation plat; the county’s outline of the North Tree parcel sits about 70 feet east of the surveyed line, so the acreages are approximate. Flood zones are from FEMA’s flood insurance rate map, panel 08041C0391H, effective Dec. 7, 2018.
Sources & further reading
Town of Calhan: Moore Engineering, Infrastructure Capacity Assessment for Proposed Annexation (October 2026, Project No. 31289, posted Oct. 30, 2026), with Kimley-Horn’s Water Resources and Sanitary Sewer Report (Aug. 7, 2026) and water model write-up as appendices · Moore Engineering progress memo (Aug. 4, 2026), in the Aug. 10, 2026 Board of Trustees packet · Infrastructure study page and North Tree project page, update of Oct. 30, 2026 · Municipal Code §§ 14.02.50, 14.04.010, 14.07.070, 15.05.060, 15.05.070 and 15.11.040 · Curtis, Justus & Zahedi, Round 2 referral comments (Sept. 11, 2026)
Developer: Kimley-Horn, North Tree General Development Plan (sheets dated Aug. 6, 2026), El Paso County file ANX257 · Fairfield and Woods (Eric Trout), letter to the Calhan Board of Trustees (Aug. 3, 2026), in the Aug. 10, 2026 board packet
Water fees elsewhere: Town of Monument, Resolution 11-2026 and council minutes (Feb. 17, 2026) · Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District No. 1, notice of 2026 rates and Supplemental Water Service Policy · City of Greeley, raw water cash-in-lieu fee
Fire district: Michael Gates, fire marshal, Calhan Fire Protection District, email to the Independent (Oct. 29, 2026) · Calhan Fire Protection District, 2021 International Fire Code amendments and Resolution 26-3 · Calhan Municipal Code § 6.07 and Ordinance 2026-03
Roads: Kimley-Horn, North Tree traffic impact study (June 17, 2024) · Colorado Department of Transportation, referral comments (March 23, 2026) · State Highway Access Code, 2 CCR 601-1, § 2 · C.R.S. § 32-1-1002
Drainage and flood data: FEMA flood insurance rate map, panel 08041C0391H (effective Dec. 7, 2018) · U.S. Geological Survey 3D Elevation Program, 1-meter lidar (2018), and National Hydrography Dataset · El Paso County parcel records · Town of Calhan, public-comment summary (October 2025)
Earlier coverage: The Monument Independent, “North Tree Wants 467 Homes. Its Own Water Covers 62.” (Oct. 27, 2026)
Using this reporting? Credit The Monument Independent and link to this article: https://monumentindependent.com/government/north-tree-sewer-plant-new-well-moore-report/. Our guidelines are at Using Our Reporting.
