All the buckets, real or imagined: How Colorado plans to store water is a big dam question.
But for Greeley, bent on doubling its current population of 109,000 by 2060, this is indeed the simpler choice.
Greeley will store and retrieve its biggest future water supply at Terry Ranch, at the Wyoming border, because it's the most convenient way to create a new bucket in a state where just getting the permit for building a dam takes more than 20 years. The alternative was expanding Greeley's North Fork Poudre River reservoir, Milton Seaman, deep in the mountains at a tortuously steep cost to the environment and Greeley water customers.
That "fact pattern," as Greeley officials call it, is the modern reality for growing Colorado cities looking for new places to store water. The West's dam-building era is not over by any means. But the complications of where to do it, how to get it approved, and whom to cooperate with along the way are haunting a long list of Colorado's looming water storage projects.
Not to mention proving to dam opponents they've taken all the feasible water conservation measures available to put off the need for new water buckets as long as possible.
Storage ideas that Front Range cities are pushing forward with renewed vigor are all colored by a 34-year-old shocker from the EPA, Trout Unlimited Colorado director David Nickum said. Ever since the federal agency's 1990 decision to cancel Denver's massive Two Forks dam on the South Platte River, Nickum said, water agencies are rightfully looking over their shoulders.
"There's a lot of incentive for them to try to work more collaboratively, as opposed to Two Forks, which was just a battle royale," Nickum said. "At that time, they thought they could run roughshod over the concerns of opponents, and ultimately they were wrong. That led a lot of folks to recalibrate how they look at doing projects, and to try to think a little more cooperatively, to be a little more aware of environmental impacts and how to minimize them rather than just assuming that they could get away with them again."
The forced enlightenment for water agencies, Nickum added, "doesn't mean that things are easy."
The state of storageWestern Slope and Front Range watchdogs are drawing on 30 years of advancements in the science of measuring drought and protecting the environment, said Lindsay DeFrates, a spokesperson for the Colorado River District overseeing river use in western counties.
"Nothing is fast in water law in Colorado," DeFrates said. "So many of these projects were envisioned for a completely different reality than what we're seeing now in 2024."
Here's a roundup of storage projects that Front Range cities are contemplating to meet growth needs that the Colorado Water Plan estimates at hundreds of thousands of acre feet of bigger buckets:
Halligan Reservoir expansion City of Fort CollinsWhat Fort Collins is embarking upon in coming years for permitting a larger Halligan Reservoir is exactly what Greeley seeks to avoid by forgoing expansion of Milton Seaman Reservoir just a few miles away.
Fort Collins wants a bigger pool at Halligan, 25 miles northwest on the North Fork of the Cache la Poudre River. The expanded pool would serve as assurance in drought years and to distribute water more evenly throughout the year in the main Cache La Poudre, which nearly runs dry in the city in late summer.
The Halligan project would build a new 96-foot-high dam slightly downstream from the existing 70-foot dam, more than doubling water storage to 14,600 acre-feet and flooding 138 more acres of forest beyond the current 250-acre pool. Each extra acre-foot of water supports the annual use of two to four households.
Fort Collins says the 115-year-old dam needs to come down, anyway.
Over the summer, Fort Collins took the big, near-final step of seeking a 1041 construction permit from Larimer County, which under Colorado law gets local approval rights for big engineering works with statewide environmental implications. The city already has undergone environmental reviews from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but getting final federal construction OKs could take years longer.
Fort Collins has forced many conservation efforts over the years, utilities director Darren Parkin said, and the Army Corps review agreed with city officials that "we can't just conserve our way out of" new storage.
But Fort Collins also faces years more political and legal opposition from defenders of the Poudre, like Gary Wockner and his Save the Poudre/Save the Colorado advocacy and litigation network.
"They don't need more water," Wockner said, saying Fort Collins growth is slow and leaves plenty of conservation efforts untried. "They just have a water right, and they want to develop it because they don't want to lose it, because if they don't use it, they'll have to abandon it . So it's this quandary of 'We have to drain and destroy the river,' because that's the way the system is set up."
Terry Ranch underground storage City of GreeleyGreeley says taking water out of the aquifer below Terry Ranch, and replacing it in extra-wet years with excess surface water, will be half the cost of alternatives like expanding Milton Seaman Reservoir.
Greeley doesn't need the Terry Ranch water right now, so it is slowly building out two-way wells on the bison-dotted property and beginning to build a pipeline. Eight miles of pipeline were finished in the last year and a half, director of water and sewer Sean Chamber said, leaving 21 miles over the next few years.
"The city has long prided itself on having a really robust, resilient water system that would be future ready," Chambers said, "and the Terry Ranch aquifer project just adds a new element of resiliency to that long-range plan."
Greeley chose Terry Ranch over a Milton Seaman expansion in part because of all the environmental disputes drawing out the Northern Integrated Supply Project and the Halligan expansion, Wockner said.
"The Seaman expansion would've inundated Preble's Meadow jumping mouse endangered species habitat, and Greeley figured, rightly, that Save The Poudre would sue them forever to try to stop it," Wockner said.
Environmentalists have also raised questions about trace uranium found in both Greeley's mountain runoff supply and in the aquifer under Terry Ranch. Greeley's Chambers said such uranium traces are common in Colorado geology, and some river districts and water agencies also must deal with uranium from mining runoff. Greeley says that the city, like other water agencies, is able to account for and filter out the uranium in treatment.
Greeley also owns 10% of Northern Water's Chimney Hollow storage project now under construction west of Carter Lake . Greeley has declined to become part of the coalition of cities and water agencies investing in Northern Water's sprawling, two-reservoir Northern Integrated Supply Project . NISP would build Glade and Galeton reservoirs, along with complex water exchanges on the South Platte River with farming interests. Chambers said NISP's promise of improving Poudre stream flows through Fort Collins as part of the storage plan does not help Greeley downstream near the confluence of the Poudre and the South Platte rivers.
FIRST PHOTO: Jeff Stahla, public information officer for Northern Water, points out various zones within the site and indicate their purpose at an overlook near the Chimney Hollow dam construction site. "Materials used for the asphalt core are selected directly from the quarry next to it," he said. SECOND PHOTO: Steps on the dam wall lead toward the water test site to gauge water levels when the reservoir fills up. (Tri Duong, Special to The Colorado Sun)Call Greeley a wary observer of the $2 billion NISP plan, which still awaits 1041 approval from Fort Collins for a pipeline running through the city.
"I would say our formal position is that we are engaged, with a focus on protecting our water quality. And our water resource portfolio and the integrity of the environmental services that the Poudre River provides us and other communities," Chambers said.
Montgomery Reservoir expansion Near Alma, city of Colorado SpringsColorado Springs is among the many growing Front Range cities taking water rights from the Western Slope that would otherwise flow into the Colorado River system, and transfers the precious resource under the Continental Divide into the Arkansas and South Platte river basins for storage and delivery.
A key bucket for Colorado Springs is Montgomery Reservoir, sitting high near Alma and Hoosier Pass, between Fairplay and Breckenridge. Montgomery collects Blue River-bound water from the Western Slope side that is redirected through the Hoosier Tunnel, while also filling up on runoff from the headwaters area of the Middle Fork of the South Platte.
Colorado Springs wants to add 8,100 acre-feet of mostly Blue River water to Montgomery with a bigger dam, more than doubling its capacity. But the city had also been fighting Western Slope opponents in water court for a proposed string of new pools, including proposed Mayflower Lake and Spruce Lake reservoirs in the Upper Blue River basin. Early this year, the combatants reached a deal: Colorado Springs Utilities will give up the two proposed pools, and give the rights to build a third, Lower Blue Reservoir, to Breckenridge and Summit County.
The prize for Colorado Springs: a go-ahead to expand Montgomery. The city hopes to begin the potentially long permitting process in 2025, with construction tentatively projected for 2028 .
The memorandum of understanding reached on the future of the Blue River side of the divide is a good model for future talks, said the Colorado River District's DeFrates.
"It's one example of making sure that all the stakeholders are engaged in that conversation. And I think that kind of collaboration will become essential for moving any of these projects forward," she said.
Whitney Reservoir Successor to Homestake II, Aurora and Colorado SpringsWestern Slope opposition to a far bigger reservoir proposal, the Whitney project on the previously dammed Homestake Creek northwest of Leadville, is not likely to thaw as quickly as the Montgomery impasse.
The Front Range cities hold rights to far more Leadville area water than Homestake Reservoir's 43,000 acre-foot capacity. They gave up on a "Homestake II" decades ago, but are now analyzing results of test drilling for potential dam sites along Homestake Creek they are now calling "Whitney."
Trout Unlimited, the Colorado River District and many others have attacked the proposal and the testing, decrying renewed transfers from the depleted Colorado basin and the flooding of environmentally important "fens," or peat-based wetlands.
Aurora Water deputy director Greg Baker said further development of Homestake water is on hold while the partners carry out more feasibility studies on how storage could comply with the Eagle River Memorandum of Understanding signed with Western Slope parties in 1998.
The Eagle River, which loses water if it's pulled out of Homestake Creek first, "is one that's definitely already suffering," Nickum said. "I mean, all of our Western Slope rivers are suffering, but the Eagle is getting to where it's routinely having water temperature issues in late summer. And the more water you pull out of it, the more you exacerbate the problems. So we're very concerned about that project."
"Aurora Water has been focusing more effort on our Wild Horse Reservoir in Park County," Baker said.
Which leads us to ...
Wild Horse Park County, Aurora WaterThe Denver metro suburb, always on the lookout to shore up its drought-vulnerable South Platte sources, has shifted attention from its prospects for a second Homestake reservoir to a giant new reservoir in Park County called Wild Horse.
The Wild Horse Reservoir project, already projected at $600 million-plus, would store 93,000 acre-feet of water. It would fill to nearly twice Aurora's existing Park County pool, Spinney Mountain , The Colorado Sun and Fresh Water News reported in May. An acre-foot is enough water for the indoor and outdoor use of two to four households in a year.
"We are in the pre-permitting phase for that project, which includes geotechnical exploration and initial dam design," Baker said, in late August. The federal and local permitting process, which includes seeking 1041 permission from Park County, is measured in decade increments for most Colorado water storage projects.
Still, Wild Horse may face less opposition than the other big projects. Aurora says it is already diverting the water that would fill Wild Horse to other places, meaning filling the pool would not take additional water out of already-challenged river systems. The new pool would be off-channel, meaning it does not dam a creek or river but plugs a gully and backs water up on high prairie land, without extensive environmental damage. Water to fill it would be piped in from Aurora's existing storage to the northwest, at Twin Lakes and Turquoise Lake.
In justifying its pending projects, Aurora Water takes the conservation question head-on. "Since 2000, the city has reduced water use per person by up to 36%," Aurora says on the WildHorseReservoir.org explainer page.
And now, for a lightning-round summary of other potential Colorado storage projects, complete with lightning links to learn more:
The Boulder County town that currently stores its water in Boulder's Barker Reservoir is considering building its own pool near Nederland Middle-Senior High School. The town wants more control over its future water use, and planners are considering whether to propose damming Middle Boulder Creek or making an off-channel pool.
South Platte River corridorFast-growing Parker and allies through South Platte River farm country are proposing a complex play of three new reservoirs and a 125-mile pipeline, with costs sure to approach $1 billion. There are years of study and permitting ahead for the proposal, and it's unclear where opposition might develop.
St. Vrain Valley dam Near Lyons, St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy DistrictSome doubt whether the old Coffintop dam proposal on largely untouched St. Vrain Creek will ever break ground. But the water district revived controversy this year by filing to renew its water right for a big storage project near Lyons. The agency said it still might end up storing water in gravel ponds, a far less controversial move, but also reserves the right for a dam. Raising hackles: The old plans allow for a 350-foot wall, higher than the original version of massive Gross Reservoir dam currently being expanded by Denver Water in Boulder County.
Bear Creek Lake expansion Lakewood, U.S. Army Corps of EngineersThis effort to think outside the box in Colorado water storage was gasping for air soon after launch. State water plan officials and the Army Corps thought metro Denver water agencies might be interested in a pool 10 times bigger than the current popular recreation area, to shore up their water supplies. But local opposition gelled quickly, and there is not a big list of cities so far willing to lead a battle.
Larimer and Weld counties, various water utilitiesThe price tag for NISP is now well north of $2 billion, with construction launch not yet in sight despite decades of planning. Northern Water, the convenor for the local water utilities and farm ditch companies seeking two new reservoirs and associated pipelines, celebrated winning federal approvals in 2022 . Larimer County has approved its 1041 permit for NISP, and state courts recently upheld that decision. But Northern Water still needs city of Fort Collins approvals under its recently written 1041 laws for pipelines running under city property.
Clear Creek Reservoir expansion Chaffee County, Pueblo WaterPueblo may not be growing fast, but the city does want to bolster existing mountain supplies against drought and aging infrastructure. Pueblo has begun talking with Chaffee County and other parties about long-term desires to raise the height of Clear Creek Reservoir's dam, flooding some of the surrounding popular recreation land. The bigger pool would be used by Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
For Trout Unlimited's Nickum, reviewing the proposed Colorado water projects in all their variety leaves him largely encouraged these days, rather than discouraged.
"Storage," he said, "can be a whole range of things."
