MUCH ADO ABOUT WATER
Clear Cut? Dam? Divert?
The Debate About Water Simmers.
By Brian Hull
COURTESY OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN BULLHORN DECEMBER 2002
If anything can put water issues front and center for Coloradans, it’s drought. As the debilitating effects of the 2002 drought become painfully evident, talk of dams, reservoirs and previously unimaginable water projects are more common than ever.
Water-use meetings held by the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, once sparsely attended, have experienced higher turnouts than ever. Brian Werner, who heads the district’s Information Services Branch, says, "For the first time, my next door neighbor John and my Aunt Edna are interested in what I’m doing." And on a statewide level, as the public’s perception of water security has diminished, politicians’ assurances that Colorado’s water rights will be vigilantly guarded have increased proportionally.
Governor Bill Owens is supporting studies on the feasibility of the Big Straw water project, which would capture "California-bound water in the Colorado River near the state line and pump it back into the mountains for additional use inside our state." Owens says that "over a million lawns in California reap the benefits" as Colorado-owned water leaves the state unused.
Werner says proposals like this have, in part, resulted from California’s overuse of their allotted share of Colorado River flow. California has entitlements to a 4.4 million acre-feet feed but consistently uses 5.2 million acre-feet of water in a year. "All the other states in the Colorado River basin have been after them for years to develop a plan to get down to the limits of their entitlement," Werner says.
Ellen Wohl, author of Virtual Rivers: Lessons from the Mountain Rivers of the Colorado Front Range, questions projects like Big Straw. "I’m disappointed that we continue to look at how to get more water rather than how we use what we have," Wohl says. "You can’t take water from anywhere without altering the environment you’re taking it from. The Big Straw would be environmentally damaging."
For David Lauer, executive director of citizen-activist group Friends of the Poudre, the Big Straw sounds like a classic ‘water buffalo’ situation—a term used for people more interested in developing water rather than in conserving it. "From Governor Owens’ point of view, the only value that the river has is an economic value to the human population," Lauer says. "He’s not concerned about preserving the river as an ecological entity." It’s a classic case of environmentalist philosophy going head-to-head with that of conservative water rights advocates.
And while projects like Big Straw are relative newcomers, questions about water projects on the Poudre River have been a source of heated debate since as far back as 1925. During the mid-‘80s, Friends of the Poudre helped forge a strong groundswell of resistance to the Poudre Project, which proposed to dam the main stem of the Poudre. "Don’t Dam the Poudre" bumper stickers became popular bumper fashion, and the City of Fort Collins went on record in 1983 opposing a main-stem dam in the wake of public sentiment.
Today the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District is looking at two possible alternative sights for future water storage. Realizing the unpopularity of a mega-dam on the main stem, NCWCD has now transformed their project into what is called the Northern Integrated Supply Project. "This project has evolved, and I would argue that our thinking has evolved, since the mid-‘80s," Werner says.
NCWCD proposes to either enlarge Seaman’s Reservoir on the North Fork of the Poudre or build Glade Reservoir, a project that would use a smaller dam to divert water away from the Poudre through pipes or canals. Enlarging Seaman’s Reservoir would be achieved by building a 300-foot tall dam of rolled concrete. Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley, Erie, Windsor, Fort Morgan, Fort Lupton and several area water districts are partnering with NCWCD for the project.
Glade Reservoir would be located about a mile north of Ted’s Place (at Highway 287 and Highway 14 in Bellevue) and would flood the valley east of the Poudre River’s mouth. The massive reservoir would hold between 150,000 and 200,000 acre-feet of water and would cost around $232 million to construct. At full capacity, Horsetooth Reservoir holds 156,000 acre-feet.
Lauer and Friends of the Poudre say the cost is far too exorbitant. Moreover, they don’t believe it’s necessary. "Our argument is there are ways of conserving water and of enlarging existing reservoirs," Lauer says. "We would have no problem developing a series of smaller reservoirs. We have a problem with building a huge dam that’s going to sap all of the water of the Poudre."
The potential environmental impact that such a project would have raises deep concerns for Friends of the Poudre. Wohl’s book explains how water temperatures decrease below dams. Under these conditions, normal growth of fish and river insects are retarded, and insect spawning is curtailed or prevented altogether.
Drawing from a study of rivers below seventeen reservoirs in the Colorado Rockies, Wohl shows how reduced temperatures below dams resulted in reduced numbers of aquatic insects and species. Dams also release water low in oxygen, which impacts the ability of fish and microinvertebrates to live in channels until the water becomes re-oxygenated. Friends of the Poudre say such damage to aquatic insect habitat, which in turn support mammalian, fish and avian wildlife, is too great a risk. Furthermore, numerous studies in Europe and North America have shown a reduction in diversity and abundance of forests downstream from dams.
"The Poudre River is one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Rocky Mountain West and our [Friends of the Poudre] charge for the last fifteen years has been to keep it that way," Lauer says. "The river is an ecosystem, and it has its own rights that are senior to any human rights, as far as we’re concerned."
Lauer argues that after constructing a project like Glade Reservoir, the Poudre would no longer be a free-flowing river and would support less wildlife. "We will lose the quality of life that we’re used to having, and the Poudre will essentially become a creek downstream of such a large dam," he says.
Despite Lauer’s claims that the Poudre is a "free-flowing river," much of the river is full of irrigation intakes and outtakes. Wohl says the only part of the Poudre that’s pristine is at its headwaters. Knowing this doesn’t diminish her desire to discourage future dams on the Poudre. "Just because the system isn’t completely pristine doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot worth fighting for," Wohl says.
For the NCWCD there is another element of the equation besides considerations of the Poudre’s ecosystem—namely water rights. Since the Poudre is the only river in the Front Range from Wyoming to New Mexico that in most years has unused capacity, its water is highly sought after.
In the mid-‘80s, the City of Thornton purchased more than 120 farms in Larimer and Weld Counties. The farms were not purchased for agricultural purposes but to obtain water rights. Werner says it was part of a "grand plan" to build a northern project and take water from north of Fort Collins all the way to Thornton by way of a pipeline that would have run down the middle of Interstate 25.
Despite Thornton’s existing claims to water rights on Larimer and Weld County farms, the city has yet to utilize any of the water. "To take that water down, they’re going to have to have a tremendous infrastructure, and I don’t know how they’re ever going to get it built," Werner says.
When Thornton filed for junior rights to the unused capacity of the Poudre River, the NCWCD was determined to maintain Northern Colorado’s water rights rather than surrender them to a Denver suburb. In the eastern United States, riparian water rights have traditionally been given exclusively to owners of land bordering water bodies. But in the West, the practice of giving water rights to the first person or entity that put water to a "productive" use is prominent. This doctrine of prior appropriation became accepted in the water-scarce West, as mining operations often had to carry out large scale transportation of water to process ore.
Attached to the doctrine of prior appropriation is a "use it or lose it" principle, similarly rooted in mining history. Mining claims to water were valid as long as mines were active and productive. As a result, NCWCD has had to show that they are looking for ways to use the Poudre’s unused water capacity in order to maintain the senior water rights they currently hold.
Recent history in Sugar City, Colorado, an agricultural community situated along the Arkansas River Valley, has also added to NCWCD’s sense of wariness regarding Thornton’s maneuvers. During the ‘70s and ‘80s, the cities of Aurora and Colorado Springs bought up water rights on individual farms along the Arkansas Valley. Soon after, Sugar City found its agricultural economy collapsing under the strain of water shortage. Tens of thousands of acres of land, which once raised beets, corn and sorghum, dried into desert-like conditions as water flowed uphill to Aurora lawns and golf courses.
Not only had economic devastation accompanied the buyouts, but arguments over whether or not farmers should sell their water rights to growing urban areas had torn families, churches and communities apart, according to Arkansas Valley native Frank Milenski. This summer, when three investors purchased $25 million worth of small farms along the Arkansas Valley, fears of another Sugar City came to the forefront. Counties along the Arkansas quickly acted and voted a new Lower Arkansas Conservancy District into existence. "Now if the City of Aurora goes to the Arkansas Valley, they can’t take the water out without a plan to mitigate the financial consequences," Werner says.
Concerns like these have also led the state’s three multi-county regional organizations to band together to form a new group called Colorado 58. The group represents 58 of Colorado’s 64 counties and has endorsed a set of statewide Water Principles they hope will guide Colorado’s water future.
"Every corner of our state is dependent on Colorado’s finite water supply and will be impacted by the decisions which our state’s elected and appointed leaders make regarding future water management options," says Dennis Murphy, chairman of the board for Colorado’s southern region multi-county group, Action 22. "Our organizations share a common concern that these water decisions must be made with full consideration of the long-term and potentially irreversible economic, social and environmental consequences which those decisions will have on our various communities. One community’s solutions can’t create another community’s problems."
The NCWCD itself has an eight-county service area, including Larimer, Weld, Boulder and Broomfield Counties. It delivers water to 30 cities and towns. "Planning for future water supplies for the region is one of the reasons we were created, and we take that seriously," Werner says. "So we continue to do diligence and look for the day in which a project using the additional supplies of the Poudre makes sense. Sooner or later, someone is going to put those water rights to use. And essentially we want to have control over our own destiny."
According to Werner, "You can maintain a ‘diligence right’ for 20, 30, 50 years." And although he doesn’t believe that Northern Colorado is in danger of drying up anytime soon, he is reluctant to remain inactive. "If we were stupid enough, we could grow by another two million people without ever building another water project at all in Northern Colorado," Werner says. "But the trade off is that you would dry up all of the farmland, which I argue is our open space. You’d basically be growing condos instead of corn."
For Lauer, the fact that Werner emphasizes unused claims on the Poudre illustrates a fundamental philosophical difference in their approaches. "Werner is probably right that this is the only Front Range river that has unclaimed water going downstream," he says. "We think that’s a good thing; he thinks it’s a bad thing. We think it’s a good thing that not every single drop of the river belongs to somebody. It’s kind of like the Indian Chief Seattle, who said, ‘How can you own the land?’ We feel the same way about water. How can human beings claim to own the river?"
While this appeal rests heavily on emotional persuasion, Friends of the Poudre realize they’re going to have to be persuasive on many levels. Keeping the main stem free of mega-dams obviously has a strong appeal, but will Northern Colorado residents have an adequate supply of water 50 years down the road? Facing the driest Poudre runoff in 116 years—since records have been kept—it’s a question that environmentalists cannot evade. "We are realizing that more storage is needed in Northern Colorado, both to have water storage for dry years and to better manage that water even in wet years," Lauer says.
Grant Cardon, an associate professor of Soil Science at Colorado State University, says he believes groups opposing water projects are going to have a difficult time preventing them after this year’s drought. Cardon says, until recently, water questions were on the backburner because of endangered species concerns. "But when we humans begin to suffer, you start to see water supply and storage concerns come back to the forefront," Cardon says.
Endangered species are, in fact, one of the concerns that may prevent projects like New Seaman’s and Glade Reservoirs from being realized. Getting the projects reviewed for an environmental permit is still one year away. And Friends of the Poudre suspect that concerns over damaging too much habitat of the Preble’s Meadow Jumping mouse might result in an unfavorable environmental impact statement, preventing the project’s approval.
One of the structural options Friends of the Poudre has investigated is the potential expansion of Halligan Reservoir. The reservoir, located off the North Fork of the Poudre near Livermore, could be expanded to hold up to 40,000 acre-feet, according to Lauer. "It wouldn’t be as difficult to mitigate the impact on the Preble’s Meadow Jumping mouse because it wouldn’t destroy as much habitat," he says. "We’re saying if we enlarge this to 20,000 acre-feet, it will satisfy the needs of Fort Collins for the next 40 years."
Lauer says most of the published research about Halligan Reservoir is being done by the Fort Collins Water Utilities Department. Friends of the Poudre have also hired engineering and hydrological firms to conduct studies on the matter. Denise Bode, Fort Collins Utilities water resources manager, says Fort Collins has been studying the possibility of enlarging Halligan and purchasing it from the North Poudre Irrigation Company. Another option being weighed by both Friends of the Poudre and the NCWCD is to utilize mined-out gravel pits as potential water storage facilities.
Lauer believes that as long as Friends of the Poudre stay rational and support reasonable alternatives, they’ll have public support. "When county and city governments hear alternatives to projects that will cost a huge amount of money and take the better part of 25 years to realize, we might have a reasonable chance."