The Colorado Sun15%
Doubled water bills bring politics to a boil in the Pinto Bean Capital of the World 9%
By Nancy Lofholm0%
7/30/2026, 3:22:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 8 faulty reasoning types, including Red Herring, Framing Effect, and Availability Heuristic, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 23% saturation with 366 hits. Analysis detected 799 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,589 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 24.4% and a BS Rank of 9% (20,564 of 22,405 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 91.80% of the article peer group.
The Pinto Bean Capital of the World is at a boiling point.
And it’s not related to the Ferris fire that has torched nearly 65,000 acres nearby.
The normally quiet town of Dove Creek has gotten so politically charged that the town hall has had to lock its doors.
For more than two months, the once-upon-a-time gas station that serves as town hall has been closed.
A sign on the door states it is “due to threats and inappropriate behavior towards the Town staff and Town Board.”
The anger is centered on water — specifically water bills.
They are being doubled, and that increase has incensed the town’s residents.
When Dove Creek’s 700 or so residents were informed in early May of the new rates — $132 per month for basic residential water and sewer service — they showed up at town board meetings in moods ranging from irate to livid.
There was yelling and shouting and blame cast on the board and town officials.
It hasn’t died down.
“I think people are working through their anger.
They are yelling at their own,” observed Kendra Cook, the editor and publisher of the Four Corners monthly newspaper and online news source, The Pinto Bean.
The three women who run the town hall were sitting ducks as they dealt with angry townspeople charging in to vent about the doubled bills.
With the town board’s blessing, they shut the door, posted the sign, and have been carrying on town business from behind locked doors or the safety of their own homes.
One of those women — the town manager — recently resigned.
So did one town board member.
The town is actively recruiting for both but it’s a bit of a tough sell with a town government in lockdown.
“The water rate issue was the atomic bomb here,” said Kenny Smith who operates Arcadia Farm on the outskirts of Dove Creek and sells produce in front of the shuttered town hall on Saturday mornings.
The front doors of the Dove Creek Town Hall on U.S.
Highway 491 are plastered with notices, two of which announce that the office is closed “until further notice” to the public.
A large yellow sign adds that the closure is “due to threats and inappropriate behavior directed toward Town staff and the Town Board.”
(Gretel Daugherty, Special to the Colorado Sun)
Temperature turned up on a very old problem
Not that it has anything to do with town cantankerousness, but Dove Creek straddles what used to be the infamous Colorado 666.
Its name was changed to Colorado 491 in 2003 to erase the mark-of-the-beast connotation.
Dove Creek is also on the map as the last stop for mostly unfettered access to alcohol before westbound travelers cross the state line into Utah and that state’s stricter liquor laws.
That makes the drive-up window at Frosty’s Liquors as popular a stop for travelers on Colorado 491 as a burger break at the Dinner Bell or a swing into Adobe Milling for bags of Anasazi beans that legume connoisseurs swear taste better when they are bought in the middle of bean country.
The south side of Frosty’s Liquor announces to travelers on U.S. 491 that it is the last chance to buy liquor before Utah.
(Gretel Daugherty, Special to the Colorado Sun)
But Dove Creek’s quiet little town image fractures when it comes to water.
It’s not a new problem.
Dove Creek sits in the heart of dryland farming country.
In recent times it has been too dry even for some dryland crops to grow in this parched corner of the state.
For decades, the town of Dove Creek has relied on water from the Dolores Water Conservancy District system for domestic and irrigation water.
Water flows 30 miles down a canal from McPhee Reservoir to a town holding pond and treatment facility.
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That ribbon of water was traditionally cut off in October, but Dove Creek could get through the winter with what was in the town holding pond.
But, in the especially dry years, the McPhee water has been shut off early, resulting in water shortages.
This year’s water was scheduled to be cut off in August.
Five years ago, it was shut off in July.
Brett Martin, a third-generation Dove Creek businessman and former mayor, had the mayor’s gavel when he had to declare a water emergency that year.
The town had to purchase extra water so faucets wouldn’t go dry.
The water supply has simmered on the edge of emergency since then.
“It’s just a mess.
That’s what it is,” Martin said.
“The problem is so deep and so ingrained.”
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The quality of the water is also a big headache.
There has been a turbidity issue that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is not happy about.
The department has also found invisible volatile organic compounds in Dove Creek’s water that can be harmful to health.
The state cited the town last year and demanded improvements to the water system.
That prompted the town to commission an engineering report.
That report led to the decision to switch from the Dolores Water Conservancy water to the Montezuma Water Company water.
The initial assessment of the cost of that switch estimated that it would be far lower than it actually is.
When the true cost to water users was toted up, those amounts set off the “atomic bomb” that necessitated the locked doors.
Bottled water offered to tide people over
The Environmental Protection Agency has also been breathing down the town’s neck for its creaky, leaking water system.
The agency has imposed all kinds of expensive changes on a town that can barely afford water treatment operators willing to live and work there.
“They are making it very difficult for rural America to survive,” Martin said.
“If they want to come and run the town, come and get the keys and do it.”
For now, the decrepit delivery system is a back-burner issue for citizens in a fury about their bills.
The coming weeks are not expected to help tamp down the anger.
The water switchover began this month and is expected to cause intermittent releases of sediment.
Citizens have been warned in a Water System Transition Notice that they might have to deal with water the color of diluted root beer, clogged water filters, and dingy laundry.
The town is trying to defuse the situation.
Bottled water has been distributed to help townspeople get through the sediment phase.
Mayor Grant Allen wrote a letter to Dove Creek residents explaining how the town landed in such a mess and revealed that the town is pursuing loans, grants and other outside funding to help defuse the water-bill ire.
Both town officials and citizens know the possibility of any relief won’t come in time to help those having to write big checks for their water this month.
Fireworks off, rock drilling and pig chasing on
As if domestic water woes weren’t enough for Dove Creek, the town had the Ferris fire creeping through tinder-dry vegetation to within a dozen miles of the town limits over the past few weeks.
The fire piled up towering clouds of smoke while Dove Creek was trying to celebrate the 70th annual Pick-n-Hoe Celebration over the Fourth of July weekend.
The fireworks had to be canceled.
So did the traditional “meat pit” where the popular barbecue dinner was always prepared.
The games of corn hole, egg tossing, sack racing, rock drilling and pig chasing went forward.
So did a parade of horses, ATVs, floats, politicians and farm implements that stretched through town from the dirt-strip airport that locals have dubbed the “Dove Creek International Airport” to the community gathering place in Weber Park.
A small pig flees a group of boys competing in the 10-and-11-year-old division of the Pig Chase event at this year's July 4th Pick 'n Hoe Celebration at Weber Park in Dove Creek.
Dozens of children chased pigs atound the infield of the baseball diamond enclosed by a human fence in hopes of capturing an animal to take home or auctioning it off for money.
(Gretel Daugherty, Special to the Colorado Sun)
There was shouting at Pick-n-Hoe, but not the angry kind that shut down the town hall.
It was yelling to spur on pig chasers and rock drillers.
The beer tent was busy, and plates overflowed with barbecue that was cooked in a neighboring town and brought to the park by resilient organizers.
If people were riled up over water, they didn’t show it during Pick-n-Hoe.
There was a wildland fire to keep an eye on and seven decades of town fun to commemorate.
The crowds of visitors likely had no idea water ire was boiling over behind the scenes.
They were visiting a friendly little town that knows how to have fun, locked doors or not.
Despite having to write repeatedly about the Dove Creek water woes in the Pinto Bean and to regularly pass by the locked town hall, Cook noted that Dove Creek represents what visitors tend to see: “It’s really a wonderful little corner of the world.”
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