Aguilar Wrestles With Water Safety, Aging Infrastructure, and Governance Challenges

Sue Lawson holds a drinking glass up to the light in her multigenerational home just off Aguilar's Main Street and points to a white film on the bottom. She says it comes from the tap. For her infant granddaughter, she mixes formula with purchased water only. Her caution is not irrational: the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment told Aguilar's roughly 457 residents in a February 2026 public notice that "we cannot be sure of the drinking water quality at that time." In a town founded in 1894 and still anchored to a historic Main Street near the Spanish Peaks, that sentence lands hard.

Aguilar's water crisis did not arrive suddenly. Since the early 2000s, a compounding infrastructure problem has accumulated layer by layer, and the state has monitored but not seen it fixed.

A 180,000-Gallon Tank That Should Have Been Replaced Years Ago

At the center of Aguilar's water safety emergency sits the North Tank, a 180,000-gallon steel structure that holds the town's finished drinking water. A comprehensive inspection completed in September 2025 found extensive interior coating failure and corrosion, including pitting on the tank floor, walls, and support column. Cracks had opened in the roof, some patched and some not. Vegetation had pushed into roof fissures. Even the access gasket had developed a hole. The Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment concluded that these defects create pathways for contamination and could compromise the tank's structural integrity over time.

On December 9, 2025, state inspectors conducted a full sanitary survey and issued their report on January 6, 2026. It identified three significant deficiencies and five violations of the Colorado Primary Drinking Water Regulations. Among the most alarming: town staff had been adding disinfecting chemicals based on manual readings rather than according to the actual flow rate at any given moment, meaning the concentration of disinfectant in the water supply was not reliably controlled.

The state's backflow prevention picture is equally troubled. In 2024, Aguilar achieved a backflow compliance ratio of just 0.43, against the required 0.90. Written backflow program reports were not completed for 2022 or 2023. The violations triggered mandatory Tier 2 and Tier 3 public notices, with distribution deadlines running through January 2027, and the town must certify compliance within 10 days of each distribution.

The $5.7 Million Project and the Administrator Who Wore Every Hat

Aguilar was not without resources or ambition. In 2021, the USDA awarded the town $5.7 million to build an augmentation reservoir to replace out-of-priority stream depletions caused by pumping from the town's alluvial wells. Construction began in December 2023. The project should have been a turning point.

Instead, it became a symbol of what happens when a very small government concentrates too much responsibility in a single person. Tyra Marie Avila served as Aguilar's Town Administrator, Clerk, and Treasurer simultaneously for 17 years before resigning in September 2024. In October 2025, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, working in coordination with the USDA Office of Inspector General and the Las Animas County Sheriff's Office, announced her arrest on multiple felony charges. Investigators allege she diverted more than $26,000 in public funds, including money from the federal loans and grants earmarked for the reservoir project, to her personal bank accounts. The funds were allegedly commingled with the town's general fund, contractors on the critical water project were left unpaid, and the reservoir remains incomplete and uncertified by the state. Avila posted a $15,000 bond after turning herself in. The charges are an accusation; she is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

By August 2024, the water project had drained the town's general fund entirely. The fine from the state added insult to injury: CDPHE levied a $3,822.50 penalty and handed Aguilar a long compliance checklist that included replacing Tank No. 1, completing overdue financial audits, adopting budgets on schedule, and submitting a Project Needs Assessment justifying the construction of a new tank.

A County That's Watching from a Distance

For a town where the marshal's position has long sat vacant and the nearest consistent law enforcement presence is the Las Animas County Sheriff's Office covering Colorado's largest county by area, the isolation feels structural. Las Animas County Commissioner Robert Lucero, whose district includes Aguilar, described his familiarity with the situation bluntly: "I don't really know other than what's on social media." Former Aguilar Trustee Angela Adams has said it feels like the town is on its own in some ways. Patricia Romero, director of the Aguilar Historical Society, has watched the town's slow contraction from a Main Street where boarded-up facades now outnumber open storefronts, though a mercantile, a gas station, and an Ace Hardware still anchor the block.

Since Avila's departure, the town has moved to establish stricter financial controls, including creating a separate account for the water project accessible only by the current mayor and a USDA official.

What Residents Are Paying and What Has to Happen Next

The compliance path is narrow and the timeline is already slipping. The town implemented a water rate increase in September 2025, with a further 3% hike that took effect in January 2026 and annual adjustments planned going forward. Residents are paying more for water the state has flagged as potentially unsafe.

The deadlines ahead are concrete. Aguilar was required to submit a written corrective action plan to CDPHE by February 20, 2026, and to resolve all cited deficiencies by May 6, 2026. Overdue financial audits represent a parallel obstacle: the 2024 audit was pushed to February 28, 2026, and the 2025 audit is targeted for submission by May 31. Those audits are prerequisites for accessing the grant and loan funding the town needs to pay for new infrastructure.

The most consequential deadline is the application window for a State Revolving Fund loan to finance a replacement for Tank No. 1. Because of audit delays, the town now anticipates applying in October 2026 or January 2027, well past its original schedule. Moonshot Missions received EPA funding in September 2025 to prepare a new Project Needs Assessment, which must be completed before that loan application can proceed. Once a loan is approved, Aguilar will enter bid and construction phases, with a requirement to complete construction within one year of issuing a notice to proceed.

The path from Lawson's kitchen sink to a compliant, safe municipal water system runs through auditors, grant writers, engineers, state regulators, and a town board managing all of it on a budget that already hit zero once. Residents tracking the process can follow official postings on the town's website, monitor CDPHE enforcement order DW.05.23.136100 for compliance milestones, and attend board meetings where budget revisions, audit submissions, and SRF loan applications will be decided. Those decisions, not the faded storefronts, will determine what Aguilar looks like in another decade.