Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District told customers in a notice updated Aug. 20 that a seasonal algal bloom in Lake Woodmoor had left their tap water tasting earthy or musty, that the compounds responsible are harmless, and that the water continued to meet or exceed every federal and state standard. Behind that aesthetic problem sits a harder one. The district is now treating and delivering nothing but lake water, its newest well is finished but cannot yet be switched on, and the regional water project it set out to build with three other governments is coming apart around it — leaving Woodmoor, which already carried close to 60 percent of the cost once the first partner had gone, planning a smaller version alone with the financing undecided.
What was in the water
The district’s own notice, signed by Operations Superintendent Dan LaFontaine, explains the cause: a natural, seasonal algal bloom in its source-water lake. When algae reproduce in warm, sunlit water they release organic compounds that, in the district’s words, “do not easily break down during standard water treatment processes.” The two most common are geosmin and 2-methylisoborneol, usually written MIB.
Human noses are unusually good at finding them. Most people can detect the compounds “at extremely low levels — as low as a few parts per trillion,” the district says, which it likens to a single grain of sugar in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Published research puts the point at which the general public typically notices them somewhat higher: a U.S. Geological Survey method report cites roughly 30 nanograms per liter for geosmin and 10 for MIB, with the method’s own detection limits near 2, while later work has reported odor thresholds around 4 nanograms per liter for geosmin and between 2 and 15 for MIB. Thresholds vary by compound, by person and by method. OCN reported LaFontaine telling the board that the most sensitive tasters detect the compounds at one part per trillion — at the very bottom of, or below, those published figures.
On safety the district is unambiguous. Geosmin and MIB “are completely non-toxic and harmless to human health at the microscopic concentrations found in drinking water,” its notice says. The water “continues to meet or exceed all federal and state drinking water safety standards,” and the district says it remains in compliance with state health-department guidance on regulated and unregulated contaminants. The problem, it says, “is strictly aesthetic.”
The district listed four responses: optimizing treatment to reduce the compounds before water leaves its plants; continuous testing at the source and through the system; treating Lake Woodmoor itself with NSF-certified oxidation chemicals, applied on Aug. 10 and still being evaluated for effectiveness; and flushing fire hydrants to pull newer water through the distribution system. OCN reported the volume as 600 gallons of a peroxide-based algaecide applied to the top six feet of the lake, and that the product cannot be stored on site.
Two questions the notice leaves open, the district has now answered. The source water was tested for cyanotoxins during the bloom, Shaffer says, and the results were negative. On whether the Aug. 10 treatment worked, he says customer complaints have “drastically trailed off” since it was applied, but that the district is still waiting on laboratory results for geosmin and MIB in order to check the fall in complaints against the concentrations themselves. Judging by past treatments, he says, the district would not expect the taste to worsen as fall approaches — though “Lake ecosystems are highly complex and the District cannot guarantee taste and odor aesthetics will remain constant at any point in time.”
For customers, the district’s own advice is to chill tap water in the refrigerator, add citrus or cucumber, and use a standard activated-carbon pitcher filter, which it says works on both compounds. OCN reported LaFontaine also warning the board against whole-house carbon filters, which strip the chlorine residual before water enters a home’s private plumbing.
The lake, and the wells
Woodmoor draws on both Lake Woodmoor and Denver Basin wells. This summer it leaned unusually hard on the lake.
Three of the district’s wells were unavailable when the bloom hit, OCN reported. Well 21 has since been repaired and, District Manager Jessie Shaffer says, is operational and available to be switched on. Well 12 has been redrilled. Well 23 has not been drilled at all: the district anticipates drilling it next year, subject to its budgeting process and board approval.
The quarter-share figure reported from that meeting describes something narrower than it sounds. Shaffer says it was the blend operations staff were running at the Central Water Treatment Facility on Aug. 10 — 25 percent well water to surface water — and not a share of delivered water. Staff kept the blend running for about a week and noticed no improvement from it. As of Sept. 3, Shaffer says, the district is treating and delivering 100 percent surface water. LaFontaine told the board that groundwater generally tastes better than surface water, OCN reported; at present there is none in the mix.
The lake has also fallen about ten feet, and the district is careful about what that does and does not mean. Shaffer confirms the figure but says it measures the drop in the lake’s water-surface elevation from the point earlier this year when the district began drawing on surface water through the Aug. 10 meeting. The report to the board, he says, “was not related to the taste and odor issues nor was it meant to imply any correlation between water surface elevation in Lake Woodmoor and taste and odor aesthetics.” The Independent has not established the lake’s normal operating range.
Two other wells show how long a fix takes. The district’s summer newsletter said the redrill of Well 12 — Well 12R — was in its final stage, with Gordon Construction installing pumping equipment and running disinfection and testing, and construction scheduled for completion by the end of August. That date has passed. Construction finishing is not the same as the well producing. Shaffer says Well 12R is complete and operational and that its PFAS results have come back negative, but that it cannot be switched on until manganese results arrive and the state health department reviews and approves them — three to four weeks, the district expects.
The five weeks reported from the Aug. 10 meeting is not a regulatory holding period. Shaffer says the state health department requires PFAS testing on all new sources of water, that collecting the samples takes a few hours, and that the five weeks describes how long the laboratory can take to return results.
The other is Well 13, and the account of it needs correcting. Shaffer says the well the district is re-evaluating is a Denver-aquifer well under permit 40474-F, drilled in 1992, which has stayed offline ever since because poor production made it uneconomical to outfit against the higher-yielding wells available then. Well 11, on the same property, is the one drilled in the 1986 to 1987 timeframe.
What has changed is the comparison. With water levels declining and wells interfering with one another, Shaffer says, Well 13 may now be economical to equip. He does not oversell it: “It may not produce significant pumping rates or large annualized volumes, but the water it may produce could prove to be economical and comparative to costs associated with new wells today.” The district weighs these choices in dollars per gallon per minute of pumping rate, or dollars per acre-foot of annual volume.
What the district told customers in the spring
The contrast with the district’s own spring message is worth reading in its words rather than anyone else’s.
In its second-quarter newsletter the district warned that 2026 had been extremely dry, with snowpack in the Arkansas River Basin at 25 percent of normal, and asked customers to water thoughtfully. It also reassured them: “The Water District is in good shape with Lake Woodmoor near full and our wells online standing at the ready.” At that point the district did not believe increased restrictions were necessary, though it allowed that this “could change.”
By the Aug. 10 meeting the lake was down about ten feet from where it stood when surface-water season began, one well was finished but waiting on state approval, another had yet to be drilled, and the water tasted of algae. A July bloom is not something a spring newsletter can foresee, and nothing in the sequence suggests carelessness. What it does show is that this summer the district was relying heavily on lake water at exactly the moment several wells were unavailable.
The Loop, coming apart
The second half of Woodmoor’s summer happened in a boardroom.
The El Paso County Regional Loop Water Authority was formed in 2022 by four members — Woodmoor, the Town of Monument, Donala Water and Sanitation District and Cherokee Metropolitan District — to bring renewable water north. Cherokee withdrew at the end of 2024. Monument voted in August to begin withdrawing, a process its own resolution acknowledged was not finished and which ordinarily requires 180 days’ notice. Woodmoor and OCN both report that Donala has also decided to end its participation.
The authority still exists. Shaffer, who is president of its board as well as Woodmoor’s district manager, says proper notice of withdrawal was received from both Monument and Donala, and that no formal step toward dissolution has been taken — that is, in his words, “yet to come.” Woodmoor’s position is that it follows automatically: the withdrawal of its remaining partners, its newsletter says, “will cause automatic dissolution of the Loop Authority.”
Woodmoor’s answer is that the project continues without them, in reduced form. The district bought a ranch near Fountain in 2011 and spent years on revegetation; under its decree, it says, that work made more than 3,000 acre-feet of water available each year — it puts the figure at 977,556,000 gallons — for municipal purposes. A changed agricultural water right is not a guaranteed physical yield in any given year, and the figure is the district’s own. The reasoning behind the purchase, it writes, was that Denver Basin groundwater “was a finite resource in terms of availability and economics,” and the partners’ departure “has not changed this equation.”
What changes is scale and schedule. “Moving forward, the planned infrastructure for the project will be downsized and reconfigured with associated cost savings,” the newsletter says. The timeline “will probably have to stretch a number of years” beyond what was contemplated under the authority. Nothing in the public record shows a redesign completed, a construction authorization or a funding source; what the district has described is an intention.
And then the sentence that matters most to anyone who pays a Woodmoor water bill: the board “will also have to decide on the best method to fully finance this project, with input from our customers.” What that input will look like, and when customers should expect it, the district says is still to be determined.
The district has depended on Denver Basin aquifers for more than 40 years, it says on its website, and those aquifers “cannot be expected to supply affordable water indefinitely.” The renewable-water project is the alternative. Four governments set out to share its cost. By the time Cherokee had gone, Woodmoor’s share stood at about 59.8 percent, Shaffer says. It is now the whole of it.
What customers can and cannot do outdoors
The district’s Mandatory Water Use Program runs June 1 through Sept. 30 every year, dry or wet, and it was in force through the taste-and-odor weeks.
| Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
| Odd-numbered addresses | Water Sunday, Wednesday and Friday |
| Even-numbered addresses | Water Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday |
| Mondays | No outdoor watering by anyone |
| Prohibited hours | No watering 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., when evaporation is highest |
| Turf grass | Three times a week, per the calendar above |
| Washing a car at home | Hand-held hose with shut-off nozzle, per the calendar, not 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. |
| First violation | Written warning |
| Second, third, fourth | $50, then $100, then $200 |
| Fifth violation | $200 and a flow restrictor set to 25% of normal flow |
Hardship exemptions are granted case by case. Permits are available for new sod (two weeks) and new seed (four weeks). Flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs may be watered any day at any time by hand-held hose or low-volume non-spray irrigation. Causing water to run off into streets or drainage facilities is itself a violation.
What to watch next
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Mon., Sept. 14 | Board meeting, 1845 Woodmoor Drive. 10 a.m. The board moved September’s start time from its standing 1 p.m. |
| Within 3–4 weeks | Well 12R is complete and operational; the district awaits manganese results and state health-department approval before it can be switched on |
| Already done | PFAS testing on Well 12R; results negative. The five weeks reported at the Aug. 10 meeting is the laboratory’s turnaround for results, not a regulatory hold |
| Wed., Sept. 30 | Mandatory Water Use Program ends for the season |
| October onward | Bids and a contract award on the Highway 105 utility relocation, roughly a year of construction |
| Not yet scheduled | How the board proposes to finance a downsized renewable-water project without its three former partners |
The board’s next regular meeting is Monday, Sept. 14, at 10 a.m. at the district’s office at 1845 Woodmoor Drive. The standing schedule is the second Monday of each month at 1 p.m.; Shaffer confirms the board approved the change of start time for September.
Three things are worth watching there. Whether Well 12R clears its manganese testing and state approval and is switched on. What the district does about taste in the longer run: Shaffer says bromate, not bromide, is the compound of concern when ozone is used as an oxidant, that the district is not likely to revisit ozonation on its own, and that other approaches it may explore include biologically activated carbon filtration, hydrogen peroxide and ultraviolet light, alone or in combination, with or without ozone. And how the board proposes to pay for a project that four districts set out to split.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Monument Town Council, August 3, 2026: A Tax Sent Back, Water Rates Up, an Exit From the Loop — the vote that began Monument’s withdrawal, and the “$4 million in ARPA funds” exchange that followed it.
The district’s own record: Important Information Regarding the Taste and Odor of Your Drinking Water, updated Aug. 20 · 2026 third-quarter Pipeline newsletter · 2026 second-quarter Pipeline newsletter · Aug. 10, 2026 board meeting agenda · Board meetings and schedule · Mandatory Water Use Program · District facts and FAQs.
State records: Colorado Division of Water Resources well permit data.
Science: USGS laboratory method report on geosmin and MIB.
Reporting on the meeting: Our Community News, “Taste and odor issues battled,” Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District, Aug. 10, by James Howald, September 2026 issue.
Methodology
This article rests on three kinds of source, and the difference matters.
The district’s own published record carries most of it: a customer notice on the taste and odor event updated Aug. 20 and signed by the operations superintendent, the second- and third-quarter newsletters, the Aug. 10 meeting agenda, the board schedule, the Mandatory Water Use Program and the district’s website. Quotations from the district are taken directly from those documents.
Some statements made inside the Aug. 10 board meeting appear in neither the district’s published notice nor its answers to the Independent — the July 27 bloom date, the 600-gallon volume and the treatment of the lake’s top six feet, the detection threshold the operations superintendent gave the board, his remarks on groundwater taste and on whole-house filters. Those are reported by Our Community News, whose volunteer reporter covered the meeting, and are attributed to it throughout. The Independent did not attend. The district posts no recording, and its most recent published minutes are from January, so those statements have not been checked against a primary record of the meeting. Where the district has since addressed a point directly — the status of the wells, the blend at the treatment plant, the fall in the lake, the five-week testing period and the remarks on ozonation — this article follows the district rather than the meeting account, and says so in the text.
One claim was checked against sources outside both the district and OCN. Detection thresholds for geosmin and MIB come from a USGS laboratory method report and later peer-reviewed work; they vary by compound, person and method, which is why a range is given rather than a single number.
The Independent put fourteen questions to District Manager Jessie Shaffer on Sept. 2. He answered all of them on Sept. 3, and his answers are used throughout, quoted where the wording matters. They corrected three things this article had drawn from the meeting account: that the ten-foot fall in Lake Woodmoor was connected to the taste and odor event, that about a quarter of delivered water was coming from wells, and that the well now being re-evaluated was drilled in 1987.
Mr. Shaffer is president of the Loop authority’s board as well as Woodmoor’s district manager. He was offered the chance to answer in those capacities separately and did not take it, so his answers are attributed to him without distinction. The Independent asked what share of the original project’s cost had been allocated to Woodmoor under the four-member authority and was given the figure for the three-member authority that followed Cherokee’s departure; the article uses it as such.
