Salvageable material from six houses acquired by Colorado Springs Utilities in Pueblo West are going to be donated to Pueblo Habitat for Humanity.

The utility acquired the houses because of their proximity to the right-of-way  that will be needed for the Southern Delivery System, a 62-mile pipeline that will bring water from Pueblo Reservoir to Colorado Springs.

“We are very appreciative of how cooperative these property owners have been in the land acquisition process. They have all been great to work with. And now it is even more gratifying to see the materials from these homes reused for such a positive purpose,” John Fredell, SDS project director, stated in a press release. ”Habitat for Humanity is a wonderful organization and we view this as a great way to give back to the community.”

As each house is vacated, Pueblo Habitat for Humanity staff and volunteers will remove usable items such as appliances, garage doors, cabinets, light fixtures, sinks, toilets, blinds, curtains, as well as hardware from doors and cabinets.

Leonard Andrews, president of the Pueblo Habitat board of directors, said the arrangement is also a boon for the environment. “Often, materials from homes purchased for municipal construction projects end up in a landfill,” he stated.

According to the press release, construction on the pipeline is scheduled to begin in 2011. Currently, CSU officials and Bureau of Reclamation officials are trying to negotiate a long-term contract that would allow the SDS partners to store non-federal water in Pueblo Reservoir, which is part of a vast water collection system owned by the federal government that brings water from the West Slope to the East Slope.

Issue 300, the so-called citizen initiative authored by Colorado Springs resident Douglas Bruce, got on the citywide ballot last November with a lot of help from out-of-state residents, including Michael Rhodes, city clerk’s records show

Although Rhodes was not present during a campaign finance hearing in Denver on May 24-25, spectators and witnesses heard him telling a Denver petition circulaton firm that it had a “cherry opportunity to make a stupid amount of money” by circulating petitions for three statewide measures at a conservative rally.

Rhodes is the head of ProVote America, a petition circulation company based in Los Angeles. He has not responded to emails requesting an interview.

Rhodes was the second-largest collector of signatures for Issue 300, gathering 2,162 signatures, or 14.5 percent, of the valid signatures needed to get on the ballot. Rhodes also gathered thousands of signatures for three statewide measures that will be on the November ballot.

Opponents say the measures, called Amendment 60, Amendment 61 and Proposition 101, would have a devastating impact on the state economy. Amendment 61, for example, would forbid the government from issuing bonds, which would stop big construction projects like the Southern Delivery System.

Issue 300, which ends payments to the city from its revenue-producing entities, will reduce city coffers by $100 million over the next eight years, Vice Mayor Larry Small has said.

Residents of Colorado Springs will be feeling the impact for years to come.

Former reporter Perry Swanson and I went to the City Clerk’s Office a couple of months ago and built a database of the petition circulators on Issue 300. Our research showed that at  least 14 of the 16 top signature gatherers listed below do not live in Colorado Springs. Here’s what we found:

As Colorado Springs Utilities prepares to embark on the construction of its billion-dollar Southern Delivery Pipeline, it’s worth noting that water usage has declined by nearly a quarter, or 7 billion gallons, from 2001 until 2009.

The reduced demand over the nine-year period is largely a result of customers  using less water on their lawns and gardens, said CSU spokesman Dave Grossman. Rebates on energy-efficient toilets, water restrictions and other factors also played into the tremendous conservation effort,  he said.

In 2001, customers used 30.3 billion gallons; in 2002, 27.4 billion gallons; in 2003, 24.4 gallons; in 2004, 23.5 billion gallons; 2005, 26.1 billion gallons; 2006, 26.2 billion gallons; 2007, 25.4 billion gallons; 2008, 27.5 billion gallons, 2009, 23.6 billion gallons.

The city population grew by roughly 40,000 people during the same period, which suggests that water savings per household was even greater.

Grossman said in the midst of the severe drought in 2002 and 2003, it looked like Utilities needed to bring SDS on as soon as possible and was hoping to have the project completed by 2007.

“However, due to the tremendous conservation efforts by our customers in the years that followed, we’ve been able to delay the need date of the project until 2016,” he said.

“Conservation has enabled us to defer these construction costs (and rate increases) for several years.”

But now the SDS bill is coming due. The muncipally-owned monopoly is set to raise rates by 12 percent annually from 2011 through 2016.

Those hikes will come on top of a nearly 50 percent increase that went into effect in 2009-2010.

Colorado Springs Utilities is expected to raise water rates by 12 percent annually, beginning in 2011 and running through 2016, to pay for the Southern Delivery System .

But it’s worth pointing out that those hikes will be based on two  increases totaling nearly 50 percent that occurred in 2009 and 2010.

In 2009, Utilities raised water prices by 40.6 percent  to offset the huge drop in revenue that Utilities experienced when development charges paid by home builders and developers plummeted as a result of the economic recession and the slow-down in construction, says CSU spokesman Dave Grossman.

“For every 1,000 homes not built, there’s nearly $10 million in revenue that’s no longer coming in to help pay water expenses,” he said.

A 6.2 increase, which went into effect on Jan. 1 of this year, was needed to begin construction on SDS and for improvements to existing water infrastructure, Grossman added.

One of those improvements includes a new cover for the 50-year old Highline Reservoir on Mesa Road. The storage facilility is larger than a football field and the cover is expected to cost $8.6 million, he said.

The 12-percent annual increases related to SDS will be based on 2010 rates. When the compounding factor is taken into account, rates will double by 2016.

As one reader put it, “It seems to me  it’s a little like placing a lobster in cold water and bringing the water to a boil. We might not notice a doubling of our rate if done slowly.”

Utilities says basically the same thing  in a rate filing earlier this week. “Without a water rate phase-in, customers would see extraordinary rate increases in 2013 through 2015,” it said.

The filing, which is available on CSU’s Web site, goes into more detail about the planned costs for SDS and the rate hikes. According to the document, capitol expenditures on the pipeline will ramp up slowly, with the heaviest spending occurring in 2015 and 2016.

In 2011, Utilities plans to spend $14.7 million on SDS; in 2012, $30.8 million; 2013, $49.3 million; 2014, $70.5 million, 2015, $94.7 million and 2016, $123.5 million.

CSU’s Grossman emphasized the numbers are based on a lot of assumptions, such as inflation, the cost of construction, and regional partners who might help shoulder the load.

Water bills, he acknowledges, could go up or down.