{"id":15889,"date":"2025-10-31T13:32:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T19:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/telluride-owner-warns-of-delay-to-ski-season-if-price-of-water-for-snowmaking-is-raised\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:52:08","slug":"telluride-owner-warns-of-delay-to-ski-season-if-price-of-water-for-snowmaking-is-raised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/telluride-owner-warns-of-delay-to-ski-season-if-price-of-water-for-snowmaking-is-raised\/","title":{"rendered":"Telluride owner warns of delay to ski season if price of water for snowmaking is raised"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A skier gets a little recreation time in March 2020 at the Telluride Ski Resort. The owner of the resort has warned that its season may be delayed if the price of water for snowmaking is raised. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

As Chuck Horning navigated his first year as owner of the Telluride Ski and Golf resort back in 2005, the Southern California businessman inked a community statement he called \u201cA 20-year Vision for Telluride: Sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that statement, he promised economic development for the communities of Telluride and Mountain Village alongside protection of cultural and natural resources. Other resorts struggle with \u201coverbuilding, commercialization and traffic congestion or lack economic vitality,\u201d wrote Horning, who is now in his 80s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all want Telluride to be different,\u201d he said of the remote southwest Colorado community tucked in a dead-end box canyon. \u201cWe believe with a balanced, long-term approach, economic prosperity will occur and the community and its natural resources will be preserved while minimizing the problems associated with Aspen, Vail and Steamboat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Telluride is indeed a standout in the resort industry. Not only for its unrivaled skiing and vistas, its historic downtown and passionate community, but, recently, the community\u2019s contentious relationship with Horning. Ski town locals have long harbored a certain level of angst over the owners of their local resorts. But rarely has that angst turned into an open revolt like what is happening in Telluride right now.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a high profile scrap over Horning\u2019s unwillingness to support a 25-year concert series. A ballot measure next week could tax lift tickets to pay for the free public gondola connecting Telluride and Mountain Village. And now Mountain Village wants to more than triple the cost of water for snowmaking<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Town officials say a rate hike is overdue with no connection to the lift tax and certainly not part of a concerted effort to run Horning out of town after 21 years of troubled ownership. Horning disagrees, saying a water hike might delay resort opening dates to late December. He sees a growing animosity from municipal leaders as part of a \u201clitany of illegal, unconstitutional and grossly inequitable burdens and obstacles on the ski company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local angst has boiled over<\/div>\n

The slow burn of irked local residents has led to the creation of a website called ChuckChuck.ski<\/a>, detailing Horning\u2019s fractious 21-year ownership of the local resort and what it describes as \u201ca record of business malfeasance and poor stewardship that would embarrass most and emboldens only the truly narcissistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horning has fired several of the industry\u2019s top resort executives hired to run the ski area<\/a> \u2013 like Dave Riley and Bill Jensen<\/a> \u2013 leaving the 2,000-acre ski area uncaptained for long stretches. Last year he even fired his son, Chad Horning.<\/p>\n

The local outrage has pushed councils in Telluride and Mountain Village to ask voters Nov. 5 to impose a lift tax to force Horning\u2019s customers to help pay for the free gondola between the two towns, the only municipal transportation network in the country that involves aerial cable cars. The Mountain Village council also tried to condemn land owned by Horning<\/a> after he balked at permission for a 25-year-old summer concert series on the parcel that connects the ski slope with pedestrian village.<\/p>\n

And the latest volley in what appears to be a decentralized effort to drive Horning out is a proposal to spike water fees the town of Mountain Village charges Horning for snowmaking.<\/p>\n

In response to the no-longer-simmering insurrection, Horning has canceled discount merchant ski passes available to local businesses and town employees. He\u2019s nixed senior passes. He\u2019s also cut staff who handled group sales.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis summer we were saying at least he will turn on lifts and make snow. And now he says he\u2019s not even going to make snow,\u201d said Dirk de Pagter, a Telluride real estate investor and one of a handful of locals willing to talk on record while blasting Horning. Back in 2004, de Pagter was a fan of Horning, who had purchased a portion of the resort in 2003 and the rest of the ski area and surrounding property around it a year later from Hideo \u201cJoe\u201d Morita.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the beginning his noncorporate image was something we all liked,\u201d de Pagter said. \u201cHe was different and we hoped he would be good for us. That proved erroneous.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 350% increase in water rates, the first adjustment since 1998<\/div>\n

The town provided the ski area with 30.52 million gallons of water for snowmaking in 2025, up from 28.29 million gallons in 2024.<\/p>\n

From 2020 to 2024 snowmaking accounted for 45% of the annual demand from the town\u2019s wells. The town charges $3.53 per 1,000 gallons from snowmaking ponds and $3.84 per 1,000 gallons from town hydrants. The recent evaluation \u2013 by Glenwood Springs-based water engineering firm SGM \u2013 concluded those charges do not cover the cost of supplying water to the ski area. The water-rate review estimated the town was losing $988,000 a year in depreciation and wear and tear on 39-year-old town assets such as a water tank, pump, wells, treatment facility and delivery lines.<\/p>\n

The SGM review said it would cost $12 million to replace the 2 million-gallon tank and pump house, $350,000 for new wells, $2 million for the water treatment facility and nearly $9 million for delivery lines.<\/p>\n

The study noted that the city of Steamboat Springs sometimes provides water to a local ski area at a cost of $8.02 for every 1,000 gallons. The study did not say if it was the city-owned Howelsen Hill or Steamboat Ski Resort, owned by Alterra Mountain Company.<\/p>\n

The town of Mountain Village report suggested that depreciation costs, maintenance costs and snowmaking costs could warrant a 350% spike in water costs, with charges of $12.91 per 1,000 gallons of pond water and $14.03 per 1,000 gallons from hydrants. The report suggests the town could phase in those costs with three years of 59% increases followed by annual 3% increases for several years. The study also suggested the town could charge a flat fee of $988,000 a year to cover depreciation of water infrastructure assets with a reduced rate for water usage.<\/p>\n

Horning, through his attorney, warned council members to \u201ccarefully consider a broader perspective\u201d of the economic and environmental benefits of snowmaking that ripple across the region before spiking the cost of water. Being able to open by Thanksgiving drives early-season traffic, helps small business owners retain employees and generates tax revenue, reads a letter to the council from the resort\u2019s lawyer, Martha Whitmore.<\/p>\n

Whitmore said snowmaking serves as a strategy for water storage and helps fortify mountain landscapes against a warming climate.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiscouraging snowmaking is short-sighted and places the Town of Mountain Village at more risk for drought impacts, and the attendant environmental effects,\u201d Whitmore wrote in an Oct. 13 letter to the town council, noting the common industry refrain that creating snow is a form water storage that helps dampen soil to withstand long, dry summers.<\/p>\n

Whitmore called the water study \u201cflawed,\u201d saying the town \u201ccan\u2019t depreciate costs it did not incur\u201d and noted that TSG\u2019s high water payments in the early ski season have supported the town\u2019s water infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Whitmore also noted the 1998 agreement that granted the ski company\u2019s waters right to the town. Those water rights, in a deal forged by the ski area\u2019s previous owners Ron Allred and Jim Wells, were \u201can asset of immeasurable value,\u201d the lawyer wrote. That agreement required the town to deliver snowmaking water at the lowest rate it charges any other water user or the actual cost of the water delivery. The town has not adjusted snowmaking water rates since that 1998 agreement.<\/p>\n

Echoing Horning\u2019s threat to delay the resort\u2019s opening, Whitmore said the council should weigh \u201cthe ramifications on businesses, visitors and residents.\u201d A lack of snowmaking could also create less dependable conditions throughout the season, which could reduce tax revenues for Telluride and Mountain Village. And if snowmaking costs increase, so will the cost of $250 lift tickets and $2,100 season passes, Whitmore said.<\/p>\n

In an August letter to Mountain Village Town Manager Paul Wisor, Whitmore acknowledged there has not been an increase in water costs since 1998 and said the company \u201cis willing to meet and discuss a rate that complies with the 1998 agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing of the water rate increase has nothing to do with the condemnation consideration or the lift tax, Wisor said. The council adopted a water rate increase for residents two years ago and it was \u201clogical and necessary for us to go through that work for snowmaking rates,\u201d Wisor said.<\/p>\n

The council and ski area representatives will meet this week to discuss the price increase.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have some palatable ideas that would be helpful for everybody and we hope those are received in the spirit of collaboration in which they are conveyed,\u201d Wisor said. \u201cThe community can no longer be subsidizing the snowmaking operations of the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horning, who rarely responds to media requests for comment, in October sent a letter to Telluride residents \u2013 published in the Oct. 24 Telluride Daily Planet<\/a> \u2013 called the proposed 5% lift tax focusing on ski company guests \u201conly one of many hostile and indefensible actions\u201d by the Mountain Village town council targeting his resort company. He said town officials have leveled \u201cslanderous accusations\u201d against him that were \u201cobviously intended to gratuitously denigrate me personally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA sane local government in an extraordinarily challenging and difficult remote resort area would seek to work with the ski company, the region\u2019s economic engine,\u201d Horning wrote in his letter. \u201cInstead, for years now, the town has imposed a litany of illegal, unconstitutional and grossly inequitable burdens and obstacles on the ski company.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his letter, he called the tax \u201cinappropriate, untimely and unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese matters need to be studied and discussed so their ramifications are clearly understood, not rammed through in campaigns of disparagement, misinformation and misdirection,\u201d the 81-year-old Horning said. \u201cThere\u2019s ample time for us to get this right.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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