Sarah Haas, Peak to Peak.  Just northwest of the town of Central City, all the way at the top of Eureka Street, and tucked behind the Knights of Pythias Cemetery, sits an unassuming cinder block building painted beige. Totally emblematic of municipal architecture, the building doesn’t have windows, and from afar, seems to lack doors as well, painted beige, they blend right in.

If for some reason you were to wander to its far side, the one you can’t see from the road, you’d see that the building is, indeed, city owned. Appearing like a bunker, the Central City Water Treatment Plant isn’t just protected by impenetrable walls, but by ten-foot-tall chain link fences and a very burly looking golf cart. Underwhelming as the architecture might be, the design sends a message that whatever’s inside is important.

Although Central City is perhaps best known for its caches of gold, its enduring wealth is proving to be its primary rights to water. Water has always been a precious resource in the Western United States, but these days, as snowpacks and reservoirs shrink in what is being called a time of “aridification,” drought is the new normal and water is the new gold.

The pinnacle of an expansive system of creeks, pipelines, diversion points and reservoirs, the Central City Water Treatment Plant is where that resource becomes useable. Every day the plant fulfills the needs of 733 residents, 3,300 transients staying at hotels and casinos, and is ready to cover the potential worst case scenario of a fire that needs extinguishing. From the outside of the nondescript building, you can hear it churning with this work, like a case of architectural indigestion.

Inside, the plant looks like a mad scientist’s lab. In the center of the room are two large square containers, the metaphorical stomach grumbling from within, surrounded by networks of pipes painted bright green and blue. The walls are covered with beige colored piping and dozens of panels with blinking red lights. On the far side is a lab, full of beakers and funnels and pipettes, next to cases of chemical solutions and requisite rows of safety goggles. In every remaining nook and cranny, there are binders and papers increasing in density as you get closer to two desks near the door, each topped with a computer and countless brown rings left by innumerable cups of coffee. There are two chairs, one for guests, the other a convenient place to put things like testing equipment or a large plastic spider who, over the decades, has worked himself into Water Department lore.

Here to tell the spider’s story, and that of the last 120 years of Central City’s water department history, are utilities director Jason Nelson and water treatment technician Jack Beard who, at 22, finally has a big red scruff worthy of his surname. Jason, the chemist and biologist, is the wise elder who, with his knowledge of water and life, sits at his desk like a smiling guru who’s learned to laugh at every opportunity. Jack, the business minded engineer, is the young student full of energy and potential. Together they are the perfect duo, two parts of one whole, frequently finishing one another’s sentences.

Technically, they are co-workers, although their relationship feels familial too, full of mutual respect and love and, upon hearing the story of how they came together, one wonders if they weren’t destined to be in one another lives.

Jason has always loved water. Growing up in Salida his first jobs were at pools, as a lifeguard and later as a pool tech. In college he gravitated again to H2O, crowning his undergraduate degrees in biology and chemistry with a master’s in water resources from Idaho State. After that, he worked in Lakewood’s and Arvada’s water departments, coincidentally under the supervision of Jack’s grandfather, who was busy trying to convince his grandson to stop waiting tables and try his hand in the water business instead.

Jack obliged, and signed up to work under Jason, but still he had his mind on his business degree, driven by his penchant for selling things like cars and machine parts. But water is in his DNA and it was only a matter of time before he wholeheartedly followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and immersed himself in the business of water.

Then, three years ago, Jason transferred from Lakewood to Central City, where he was put at the helm of the city’s antique water system after only one day of training. He compares his early work to being a detective, a description still relevant three years later, as he frequently discovers mysterious aspects of Central City’s water systems that have been forgotten over the course of time. He remembers the first time he saw water pipes bolted to bedrock, and the first time he encountered springs of water popping up from the ground, “stuff you just never see in big cities, quirky stuff you only see in little mountain towns.” After just one month on the job his assistant quit, and he knew he needed help, more specifically, he knew he needed Jack.

“I’m 49 and I’ve never seen anything like Jack’s mind,” Jason says. “He can come into a complex situation with tons of different problems going on all at once and he can pick it apart in his brain, all inside his head, and put it back together again, good as new. His is a fascinating sort of brilliance.”

Jack’s mind is the perfect complement to Jason’s, which is important considering the wide swath of tasks on their plate. As water techs, they have to be adept in many areas — engineering, biology, construction, plumbing, chemistry, politics, business, strategy — just to name a few. If there is any hope of doing all that with just two people you really do need the perfect partner.

So, Jason called his brilliant young friend and asked point blank: “Will you move to Central City and be my number two?” Jack dissected the proposition like any other problem. He considered the pros, like that he would love the job, that his family had an off-grid house in Apex Valley, and that the land would be more than enough for his horse loving girlfriend to raise a humble herd. And he considered the cons, like how hard it would be to live off-grid in a small mountain town that’s far away from school and social life.

Three years later, he looks at his decision to join Jason as one of the best of his life, which isn’t to say either his nor Jason’s lives are easy. They have more work than they know what to do with, including a $600,000 reconstruction of the city’s three diversion points. They frequently work at odd hours, and neither are exactly getting rich working in municipal water.

“But we get to do what we love,” Jason says. “Working with water up here, we get to work with our hands and our minds, we get to work on problems big and small, and we get to work together on all of that, which is pretty fun.”

As of yet, the duo doesn’t have a moniker, but it’s only a matter of time until they do. Maybe something will stick, like, Butch Nelson and the Bearded Kid, or Mario and Luigi, or King and Kong. Or maybe, in a town of 700, as stewards of the town’s most precious resource, they’ll earn a fame all their own and come to be known simply as Jason and Jack, “the water guys.”

A weekly column about locals living along the Peak-to-Peak. To suggest someone for a profile please email Sarah at mountainfolktales@gmail.com.

(Originally published in the October 4, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)