Headwaters Spring 2021: Storage

STORAGE

A CRITICAL PIECE OF COLORADO’S WATER SUPPLY PUZZLE

SPRING 2021

Northern Water

Committed to Delivering Water to Northeastern Colorado 220 Water Ave. | Berthoud, CO 80513 800-369-7246 | northernwater.org

SGM SOUTHWESTERN WATER CONSERVATION DISTRICT Celebrating 80 Years Developing and Conserving the Waters of Southwestern Colorado 841 E Second Avenue, Durango, CO 81301

www.swwcd.org

970Ǧ247Ǧ1302

We deliver best fit solutions and responsive services for all your water resources planning, water rights and water quality needs in Western Colorado

w w w. s g m - i n c. c om | 970 . 945. 1 0 04 G L E N WO O D S PR I N GS G R A N D J U N C TI O N

G U N N ISO N AS PE N

DURANGO

SA L I DA

MEEKER

Pulse Hacks and Cyber Attacks Threaten Water Security Ransomware, hackers, and other cybersecurity breaches threaten water utilities, the water they provide, and the data they house. The pandemic has exacerbated the challenge.

8 Regenerative Agriculture Gets a Boost A $5 million deal between Colorado and the USDA will add staff statewide to help farmers and ranchers improve soil health, capture carbon, add drought resilience, and more.

9

Inside DIRECTOR’S NOTE

4 WHAT WE’RE DOING

WEco's upcoming events, reporting and more.

5 FROM THE EDITOR

6 AROUND THE STATE

Water news from across Colorado.

10 MEMBER’S CORNER

Celebrate the impact of WEco’s members.

31

Contents | Spring 2021 THE STORAGE ISSUE Colorado’s water storage—through reservoirs and underground aquifers—has played a cornerstone role in sustaining livelihoods and development for more than a century. Spurred by a goal set in the Colorado Water Plan to develop 400,000 acre-feet of additional water storage by 2050, Coloradans still rely on dams of the past but are looking toward the next era of reservoirs: one where projects are collaborative to meet diverse needs, environmental protection receives careful consideration, and where water managers are agile in responding to changing conditions.

11

Shaped By Storage: The How and Why of Storing Water in Colorado

The many flavors of water storage are embedded in the way Coloradans live. On the cusp of a new storage era, plans for additional reservoir volume are in the works, but new projects — even smart projects — don’t come without environmental tradeoffs.

By Caitlin Coleman

18

The Way We Bank: Thinking Beyond the Dam Faced with an uncertain climate future, limited water rights, and social and environmental pressures, water managers are reexamining what good water storage projects look like and exploring everything from networks of smaller, shared reservoirs, to aquifer storage, to natural storage solutions, and more.

By Jason Plautz

[ P R O F I LE S ] Water storage projects of all sizes carry a balance of opportunity and challenges for water managers, landowners, and community members. Meet them and their projects.

Greeley | Republican | Chatfield | Lower South Platte & Parker | Centennial White River | Cucharas | South Platte

Above: After the Chatfield Reallocation Project was completed, consultants with ERO Resources worked on mitigation near the South Platte River in Chatfield State Park.

Courtesy Chatfield Reallocation Project On the cover: Denver Water’s Antero Reservoir, built in 1909 in South Park, then updated with dam repairs and reopened in 2017, is the highest reservoir on the South Platte River.

Photo by John Wark H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

3

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

STAFF

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Jayla Poppleton Executive Director

Lisa Darling President

Jennie Geurts Director of Operations Sami Miller Membership and Engagement Officer

I

know I’m not alone in my attraction to bodies of water, flowing or still, for enjoyment and refreshment. When I studied at Colorado State University, it was either the Poudre River or Horsetooth Reservoir where friends and I would head to unwind.

Living in Denver, I’ve spent time at Cherry Creek Reservoir, Chatfield, Standley, and other water bodies created by manmade impoundments and beloved by locals for their recreational opportunities. Escaping Denver, I’ve camped at Rio Grande Reservoir, Pueblo Reservoir, Dillon, Turquoise, Stagecoach and Green Mountain, to name a few.

While recreation is never the driver for a new reservoir—nor is it the main focus of this Headwaters issue—it’s frequently a valuable side benefit. The draw to the state’s water bodies became even more pronounced as Coloradans looked closer to home to find refuge in the outdoors during the pandemic. According to Joe Stadterman, manager of Lake Pueblo State Park—Colorado’s busiest—2020 brought record crowds, creating new challenges for managers working to ensure safety and balance resource protection with use.

Joe recently met with our staff turned film crew on the banks of Pueblo Reservoir. We were capturing footage for our upcoming virtual river basin tour focused on the Lower Arkansas Valley. After Joe, Chris Woodka from the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District went on camera to describe the reservoir’s primary function as terminal storage for the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project. The district contracts with the federal government to supply many different water uses, from cities to farms to industry.

The end of our filming trip brought us to the banks of John Martin Reservoir (pictured above) in Bent County, another state park offering fishing, birding and water sports, plus flood control and water storage for irrigation.

I bet many people don’t think about the storage and other functions these reservoirs provide when they’re out there recreating—another example of the unsung heroics of water managers! Nor are they likely to recognize the impacts from building dams and storage, and the steps taken to protect our flowing waterways or other environmental considerations when a project gets built.

I love all of our work at WEco, but our tours are especially invigorating. Nothing beats learning firsthand what people care about, what they’re up against, and what they’re working on, and then creating an experience for others to learn the same.

This is the work we do to help people in different sectors and different regions learn from one another, and to introduce and orient new community members and decision makers to water management and protection in Colorado.

Balanced, expansive knowledge and awareness will help ensure we continue investing wisely, working collaboratively, and considering the costs of our actions as we work toward the best possible solutions to our water challenges.

Stephanie Scott Leadership Programs Manager Scott Williamson Education Programs Manager

Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. Vice President Brian Werner Secretary Alan Matlosz Treasurer Perry Cabot Nick Colglazier Kerry Donovan Paul Fanning Jorge Figueroa

Jerd Smith Fresh Water News Editor

Dulcinea Hanuschak

Charles Chamberlin Headwaters Graphic Designer

Julie Kallenberger

Eric Hecox Caitlin Coleman Matt Heimerich Publications and Digital Resources Managing Editor Greg Johnson David LaFrance Dan Luecke Kevin McBride Karen McCormick Peter Ortego Lauren Ris Don Shawcroft Laura Spann Chris Treese

THE MISSION of Water Education Colorado is to ensure Coloradans are informed on water issues and equipped to make decisions that guide our state to a sustainable water future. WEco is a non-advocacy organization committed to providing educational opportunities that consider diverse perspectives and facilitate dialogue in order to advance the conversation about water.

HEADWATERS magazine is published three times each year by Water Education Colorado. Its goals are to raise awareness of current water issues, and to provide opportunities for engagement and further learning.

THANK YOU to all who assisted in the development of this issue. Headwaters’ reputation for balance and accuracy in reporting is achieved through rigorous consultation with experts and an extensive peer review process, helping to make it Colorado’s leading publication on water. © Copyright 2021 by the Colorado Foundation for Water

Education DBA Water Education Colorado. ISSN: 1546-0584

—Executive Director— p.s. We’d love to see you on our virtual tour bus on June 3! See the website to sign up.

4 • WAT E R E D U C AT I O N C O LO R A D O

What we’re doing

Get on the (Virtual) Tour Bus!

Join us on June 3 for a virtual tour of the Lower Arkansas River Basin. The tour will include sites from Pueblo Reservoir to John Martin Reservoir and beyond, giving participants a unique look at critical water issues in this region. The itinerary will showcase water quality projects, agricultural operations, alternative transfer methods (ATMs), interstate compact considerations, the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, municipal, environmental and recreational priorities, and more. There will also be an interactive Q&A opportunity with tour speakers, and a pre-tour networking event. Register today at watereducationcolorado.org.

Calling All Water Educators!

We are excited to host our annual Water Educator Network Symposium and Project WET Facilitator training on June 28-29, at a location in the Roaring Fork Valley. Save the date and stay tuned for updates.

SUSTAINING COLORADO WATERSHEDS CONFERENCE Virtual and Westin Riverfront Resort, Avon, CO | OCT. 5-7, 2021

Together Like Never Before This year’s conference theme is a celebration of the opportunity to reconvene thoughtfully.

It allows us to take a look at new possibilities to reshape our thinking and approaches to working together and including more diverse voices in the time ahead.

Visit the conference website for more information: coloradowater.org.

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

5

What we’re doing

FROM THE EDITOR

We say water project permitting works at a glacial pace. When I started working on the Northern Integrated Supply Project permitting at Northern Water, I told my wife that I thought we would have a permit in around five years … I'm now retired. Northern Water is going on 17 years later, and they still haven’t received that permit.

— B R I A N WER N ER We spoke with Brian, a member of the WEco Board of Trustees and now retired Northern Water Communications Department Manager, about water storage, wildfire impacts, permitting, and more.

Read it on the blog at watereducationcolorado.org.

Fact sheets and video packages With new fact sheets and videos, WEco is bringing you need-to-know background information to help you follow the most important water news in Colorado using infographics, data, and easy explanations. Read, watch, and share about the Colorado Water Plan, Environmental and Instream Flows, and more, with additional topics added monthly.

Find them at watereducationcolorado.org.

6 • WAT E R E D U C AT I O N C O LO R A D O

I

t has been exciting to see the high level of interest we’ve had in this issue — a reflection of how important water storage is to so many people in all parts of the state, from water providers to producers, environmentalists, recreationalists, and other water users.

That should come as no surprise. As we write in “Shaped by Storage” (page 11) the Colorado that we know today is dependent on thousands of reservoirs, of all sizes, built for various purposes. And the Colorado that we’re planning now for the future will surely rely on additional storage.

The 2015 Colorado Water Plan set a goal of 400,000 acre-feet of new water storage by 2050 and all eight Basin Implementation Plans (BIPs), crafted by stakeholders in each of Colorado’s river basins, identified “increased storage” as a goal or activity that they’re working toward. Some say we’ll likely need to go beyond that target volume, developing more storage than the projects that were already in the works when that water plan goal was set, in order to meet future needs and close the gap between water supply and demand.

How do we know how much storage we need or when we will have enough? It seems that estimates are getting more accurate as progress is made on updating the BIPs and the state water plan, at least for the time being. But there’s no way to know how Colorado, or its climate, will look in another 100 years. As we explore in “The Way We Bank” (page 18) some water providers are using new technology to understand the complex balance between water availability and storage, and to hone in on smart storage sites. Others are working together on regional-scale plans. For most, the form that new storage takes — whether through new reservoirs, aquifer storage and recovery, or other projects — the amount of storage that will get built, and who’s involved are still critical questions as they grapple with water supply planning for the future.

That’s the interesting thing about storage and the likely reason for so much interest: The story of storage isn’t really the story of a reservoir, aquifer or river, rather it’s the story of shoring up for whatever the future may bring while balancing an array of variables and minimizing negative impacts.

As important as it is, storage isn’t a silver-bullet answer to Colorado’s water supply challenges. In addition to its storage goal, the water plan set seven other measurable goals, including an equal amount, 400,000 acre-feet, of water conservation. In their BIPs, all Basin Roundtables also set goals or identified activities around conservation; protecting water quality, wetlands, recreation, watershed health, endangered species, and private property rights; managing risk associated with interstate compacts; and educating Coloradans about water. For some of those goals, increased storage may be part of the solution, and even for those that aren’t directly related, they all work together on some level. Storage may not be the silver bullet, but, as we’ve titled this issue, it’s a critical piece of Colorado’s water supply puzzle.

—Editor—

ADVERTISEMENT

PERMITTING SOLUTIONS FOR WATER STORAGE By: Chloe Lewis and Sarah Correa

years ago, Westervelt F ifteen Ecological Services (WES) opened

its first office with a dedication and commitment to implementing resilient conservation on the ground across the country. “The team at WES are specialists in delivering wetland restoration that fits into long-term, large-scale land stewardship. WES has been delivering professionally managed, professionally developed habitat since 2006. Our large-scale professional approach to resource management directs us to implement sustainable resilient projects in perpetuity,” says Greg Sutter, WES Vice President and General Manager.

Since 2006, WES has grown into a national company with over 54 employees, focused exclusively on providing wetland, stream and species offsets out of four offices across the U.S. To date, WES is directly responsible for the permanent protection and management of over 28,000 acres of land. Each project has involved the restoration of large and complex systems and has resulted in the reestablishment of dozens of acres of wetlands, streams and species habitat.

This level of restoration requires

complex modeling, permitting and coordination with a variety of agencies, regulations, and landowners to ensure compliance with the highest standards of federal, state and local policies.

A local example of WES’s recent projects is the Big Thompson Confluence Mitigation Bank, approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in November 2019. This ”Bank,” and the mitigation credits it provides, offers a proactive and innovative solution to the protection of ecological resources under the Clean Water Act. Westervelt’s projects have a record of reducing permitting time and compliance costs by providing these mitigation credits. According to the USACE, mitigation credits allow for a 50% reduction in permitting time. Westervelt staff also has direct experience providing mitigation for impacts to a variety of wildlife species across the U.S, working to build durable relationships with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state wildlife agencies.

Another durable mitigation option that WES provides is a “turnkey” permittee responsible mitigation

project. In partnership with the regulatory agencies and conservation partners, WES implements the mitigation project, long-term management of the restoration site, and often times becomes the permanent landowner. Most importantly, WES ensures the perpetual protection of Colorado’s vital natural resources by placing the land under permanent conservation easements by working with our non-profit partners, which conserve Colorado’s streams, wetlands, and open spaces for future generations.

In both mitigation banks and turnkey scenarios, WES’s services offer full severance of liability for our clients.

As Colorado expands, it will require additional storage and new facilities to be added. The staff at Westervelt Ecological Services are, and will continue to be, committed to the protection of our natural resources while providing responsible environmental offsets to this growth. W Chloe Lewis is the region’s Project Planner/ Business Development Associate Sarah Correa is WES’ Director of Sales and Marketing

For more information about Westervelt Ecological Services, visit wesmitigation.com or call Chloe Lewis (303) 710-2852

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

7

Pulse

Hacks and Cyber Attacks Threaten Water Security

A

BY ALEJANDRA WILCOX s the coronavirus pandemic stretches past a year, the world has become accustomed to facing problems we rarely, if ever, anticipated before.

These new challenges extend beyond logistical work-from-home issues to graver concerns: For example, how do we keep our water systems safe from hackers?

In Florida, a water treatment plant ran into that very issue in February 2021 when a hacker breached its remote system. The hacker, who is still unknown, reportedly adjusted the sodium hydroxide—added to alkalize water and limit lead leaching from pipes—in the city’s water to poisonous levels. While the threat was quickly addressed, the incident highlighted the weaknesses of remote access operations.

The Florida water plant is far from the only utility that’s fallen victim to a cyberattack. Similar threats have happened in Colorado, too. For example, in 2019, hackers demanded a ransom from a couple of northern Colorado water districts.

(The districts were able to resolve the issue on their own). The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, works to help organizations bolster their technology and counter cyberattacks.

“Water utilities face the same types of cyberattacks as any other organization: phishing schemes, ransomware attacks and other malware designed to steal credentials,” says Dave Sonheim, Colorado CISA cybersecurity advisor. “While technology creates many advantages, it also brings with it the risk of cybercrime, fraud and abuse.”

Sonheim recommends that all individuals and organizations practice

8 • WAT E R E D U C AT I O N C O LO R A D O

good cyber hygiene, such as never reusing passwords and enabling multi-factor authentication whenever possible. He also notes that because the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated remote work, it made operations for many utilities more vulnerable.

“What we know is that breaches in cybersecurity can knock on a bazillion doors electronically until one opens,” explains John Thomas, professor of engineering practice at the University of Colorado. To prevent cyber threats from escalating, Thomas says it’s important to consider as many challenging scenarios as possible and work backward to build a more adaptable system.

Cyber issues predate the pandemic but because water utilities typically use electronic control systems that were developed in the 1960s, their technology tends to be older, too. Older tech combined with pandemic conditions exacerbated an already existing weakness.

“Systems are still outdated and not really designed to be operated on the internet,

and with all the issues surrounding COVID-19 suddenly requiring remote administration and access— it’s kind of a perfect storm,” Thomas says.

As hacks have increased, regulators have responded with more explicit guidance. The Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center offers 15 cybersecurity fundamentals targeted for the water sector.

Additionally, the Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 requires larger water utilities to conduct risk and resilience assessments of their cybersystems.

But these policies may not be enough. A recent paper on how COVID-19 might transform infrastructure resilience noted that “older best practices that focus on efficiency and stability are becoming increasingly insufficient.” That presents a new opportunity to rethink how infrastructure operates and how it can respond to unexpected situations.

Emily Bondank, a science and technology fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the paper’s authors, says that current guidelines are limited to what utilities can imagine as a future threat. But what about things they can’t imagine, like a global pandemic?

“COVID impacted us in an interesting way because it wasn't recognized as being a threat to infrastructure at all,” Bondank says.

“Even though people know cybersecurity is an issue for the water sector, it just hasn’t been invested in enough for them to really understand the vulnerabilities and threats around it.” H Alejandra Wilcox is a journalist currently based in northern Colorado. Her work has been broadcast on KGNU and has appeared in the Huffington Post, among other outlets.

Adobe Stock

Curtis Sayles, a farmer and rancher who practices regenerative agriculture on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, holds a handful of flax seeds. The flax flowers provide a resource for pollinators, while other regenerative practices improve water quality, water efficiency, soil health, and even profitability.

Regenerative Agriculture Gets a Boost

W

BY SARAH KUTA hen he started farming in 1987, Curtis Sayles went through a new pair of work boots every year. These days, he’s still wearing a pair he bought three years ago.

The difference? Sayles stopped using harsh fertilizers on his fields that ate through the leather of his boots. Sayles, a fourth-generation farmer with 6,000 acres near Seibert in eastern Colorado, now practices regenerative agriculture, a multi-faceted style of farming that advocates say has a host of benefits, including improved water efficiency, water quality and profitability. Above all, regenerative agriculture can help restore healthy, fertile soils.

Farmers like Sayles — and those who want to get started

Douglas Gayeton

with regenerative agriculture — are getting a boost through a renewed partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Colorado State Conservation Board.

In October, the agencies entered a five-year, $5 million agreement to support regenerative agriculture, soil health, water conservation and urban farms. This agreement provides funding for 25 existing conservation positions across Colorado. It also helps fund five new positions to support the state’s focus on soil health and one to support urban farmers.

The Colorado Department of Agriculture launched its Soil Health Initiative in 2020,

with the goal of helping farmers and ranchers boost their land’s productivity and drought resiliency by improving soil health. Other soil health initiatives are also underway, led by groups like the Colorado Collaborative for Healthy Soils and Farmers Advancing Regenerative Management Systems (FARMS).

Regenerative agriculture, which prioritizes soil health, has garnered interest over the last 10 or so years as farmers and ranchers grapple with challenges like variable crop prices, climate change and increasing expenses, says Clint Evans, Colorado state conservationist for the NRCS. “A lot of producers have started looking at soil health as a way that, over the long term, can help improve their overall

sustainability and resources on their farm or ranch and help them become more profitable,” Evans says.

Common tenets of improving soil health are minimizing soil disturbance while maximizing soil cover, biodiversity, and the presence of living roots. In practice, this means farmers stop or reduce tilling the land, plant cover crops, grow a strategic rotation of diverse crops, add mulch, and introduce grazing livestock.

Over several years, these practices can lead to rich soil that naturally retains moisture, produces nutrient-rich crops, and staves off weeds and pests. According to the USDA, healthy soil practices can help reduce evaporation rates, while healthy soil itself can hold more water, two outcomes that are especially helpful during drought. What’s more, reducing the use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides helps protect groundwater from chemical leaching. Healthy soil practices also reduce runoff and erosion, which keeps sediment out of lakes, rivers and streams.

“Soil health could be the baseline to healthy forests, healthy rangelands, healthy croplands,” Evans says. “All across agricultural lands, it could really be the foundation for drought resiliency and higher productivity even as climate and rainfall cycles change.” H Sarah Kuta is a freelance writer based in Longmont, Colorado.

Extended versions of these stories originally appeared in Fresh Water News, an initiative of Water Education Colorado.

Read Fresh Water News online at watereducationcolorado.org.

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

9

Around the state | BY JERD SMITH RIO GRANDE RIVER BASIN The Upper Rio Grande Basin has one of the best snowpacks in the state, measuring 90 percent of average as of April 9, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service. That marks a major turnaround for the region, where severe drought has significantly reduced groundwater levels.

In recent years the basin has witnessed some of the lowest snowpack readings in the state.

SAN JUAN/DOLORES RIVER BASIN Trout Unlimited’s Dolores River Anglers chapter is seeking to boost water quality protection in nine stream reaches in the Upper Dolores River by asking the state water quality officials to designate them as “outstanding waters.” The streams lie within the San Juan National Forest. The designation process typically takes three years and includes three public hearings, with the final hearing scheduled for June 2022, according to a report in the Durango Herald.

Climbing in Ouray Ice Park.

ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN Jim Broderick, executive director of the Pueblo-based Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, was named the 2021 Wayne N. Aspinall “Water Leader of the Year” by the Colorado Water Congress in February. A Pueblo native, he has overseen such major initiatives as the hydroelectric power plant at Pueblo Dam and the Arkansas Valley Conduit, among others. Broderick has led the district since 2002.

COLORADO RIVER BASIN The U.S. Forest Service in March approved an exploration permit to drill soil core samples to determine potential sites for a possible Whitney Reservoir, near the Holy Cross Wilderness Area above Minturn. Aurora and Colorado Springs hope to develop the new reservoir in the Homestake Valley, capturing Homestake Creek water rights based on a 1998 agreement. Some local groups are

10 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

opposed to any exploration or future water development that could impact the Holy Cross, according to Aspen Journalism.

GUNNISON RIVER BASIN The Ouray Ice Park and a local hydropower plant were severely damaged in March when a boulder slammed down, peeling off a portion of an ice face and tearing apart a section of the hydropower plant, according to The Colorado Sun. The ice park attracts more than 15,000 climbers and the hydropower plant generates about 4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.

NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN The North Platte Basin is expected to see snowmelt runoff of 86 percent of average this spring, according to the Wyoming office of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. As of April 14, storage capacity for the North Platte River System stood at 107 percent of average.

SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN More than two dozen Denver metro area communities have banded together this spring to coordinate messaging around drought and water use. Colorado’s mountain snowpack remains below normal and water agencies expected another hot, dry summer where watering restrictions will likely be needed. The move came after the state, for only the second time in its history, activated its municipal drought response plan in November.

YAMPA/WHITE RIVER BASIN The City of Steamboat Springs is building a series of new wells along the Yampa River to create redundancy in its water supply. The project is part of the city’s 2019 water master plan and will help provide backup water sources should the city’s main supplies be threatened or shut down due to wildfires, according to the Steamboat Springs Pilot.

Adobe Stock

In northern Colorado, water is diverted off the Cache la Poudre River to a series of small reservoirs and ditches surrounded by homes and farmland.

Shaped By Storage THE HOW AND WHY OF STORING WATER IN COLORADO

C

olorado boasts above-ground reservoirs and below-ground aquifer storage; reservoirs that are owned and managed by a single entity and others that are shared; storage that meets the needs of municipalities, farmers, the environment and recreation. It also has dams that serve as flood control and others that hold back water to release later to downstream states. There is storage to enable water reuse and recycling; storage that facilitates water sharing; storage as an important logistic in water treatment; and storage as a waiting place before or after water is used to generate hydropower. There are reservoirs to hold more than 940,000 acre-feet and others that hold less than 1 acre-foot. There are natural lakes used to store water, and an order of magnitude more manmade reservoirs. J

By Caitlin Coleman

Adobe Stock

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

11

The flavors of storage are as diverse as the terrain and regions of the state, and that storage allows for our way of life. In planning to meet the needs of the future, water storage will undoubtedly remain a crucial piece of the water supply and management picture, as it has for centuries in Colorado and elsewhere around the West. Yet, given the time and expense as well as environmental impacts associated with the construction of dams and reservoirs historically, the pursuit of storage alongside other water supply-and-demand-balancing strategies, such as water conservation, reuse and water sharing, is being prioritized by the state through the multi-faceted state water plan.

As one of eight measurable objectives, the 2015 Colorado Water Plan set a goal of attaining 400,000 acre-feet of additional water storage by 2050 to better manage and share water. An updated plan is expected by 2022 when that goal will likely be revisited and adjusted to account for reservoir projects that have since been completed.

Only five years after the plan was set in motion, Colorado isn’t far from meeting that goal, although some of the big projects that are already built or permitted were

“If we were to leave it up to the natural systems, we would be dry for a big part of the year.”

—Lauren Ris Colorado Water Conservation Board

in the works a decade or more before the plan included them. According to the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, 20,600 acre-feet of new water storage has come online since 2015 through the southwest metro area’s Chatfield Reallocation Project. Another 454,500 acre-feet of additional storage is either permitted or in permitting through Southern Delivery System components Bostrom Reservoir and Williams Creek Reservoir, Northern Water’s Northern Integrated Supply Project, the Northern Water Municipal Subdistrict’s Windy Gap

Colorado’s 10 Largest Reservoirs Although there are close to 2,000 reservoirs in Colorado, the 10 largest have a combined normal storage capacity of 3,272,088 acre-feet, comprising more than 40 percent of the state’s total storage. Nine of these reservoirs are federally owned. More than half of the state’s reservoir water is stored in federally owned reservoirs.

In thousands of acre-feet

1,000

940.8

800

600

539.8

381.1

400

357.7 254.0

232.9

200

154.6

152.0

129.7

129.4

0

Blue Mesa

Granby

McPhee

Pueblo

Source: Colorado Division of Water Resources

12 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

Dillon

John Martin

Green Horsetooth Mountain

Vallecito Turquoise

Firming Project, Denver Water’s Gross Reservoir Expansion, the City of Fort Collins’ Halligan Water Supply Project, and the Ute Water Conservancy District’s Monument Reservoir Enlargement Project.

If all of that is eventually approved and constructed, it will total more than 400,000 acre-feet. Such storage volume hasn’t come online in Colorado since the 1980s. Even with the goal in sight, water providers and others continue to pursue storage to maximize the use of Colorado’s water and shore up against drought. Those most likely to be successful are those with innovative plans— collaborative and low-impact projects built with the environment in mind.

INTO THE MODERN STORAGE ERA ost Coloradans rely on some form of water storage in order to live. Water is collected when available and later released when and where it’s needed. Water storage is a necessity, providing year-round access to water that would otherwise come in a rush each spring as snow melts into runoff and flows hurriedly out of state.

“If we were to leave it up to the natural systems, we would be dry for a big part of the year,” says Lauren Ris, deputy director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board.

(Ris also serves on the Water Education Colorado Board of Trustees.)

The Ancestral Puebloans, who once inhabited the Four Corners region, knew this and relied on water storage like Morefield Reservoir, which anthropologists indicate was used between 750–1100 A.D. and is still evidenced by mounds in Mesa Verde National Park.

Years later, upon settlement by non-native populations including land grant recipients, homesteaders and miners, reservoir construction proved vital to sustain a larger population. Dams were rapidly constructed in the late 1800s through 1910, primarily for agricultural water needs. In the early 1900s some 290 dams were built in Colorado, the most dams erected in a single decade.

The 1930s through 1970s brought a boom of reservoir construction to meet the demands of the state’s growing municipal water needs. Toward the end of this municipal era, the 1960s saw the greatest water storage volume constructed in any decade, with more than 1.8 million acre-feet, including two of the state’s largest water bodies: Blue

M

Charles Chamberlin

Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison and Denver Water’s Dillon Reservoir.

The rapid construction of big storage projects in Colorado and the West slowed starting in the 1970s as environmental laws and community concern about environmental impacts grew stronger and project permits became more difficult to obtain. The 1980s Two Forks dam and reservoir project debate and subsequent veto, where local community groups raised enough opposition to stop a planned 615foot dam southwest of Denver, was a turning point. Two Forks marked the very end of the era in which big reservoirs were the primary answer to Colorado’s water supply, and the start to substantial community involvement.

The past 10 years have brought the fewest new dams and least amount of new storage volume in 120 years. Yet the call for storage from stakeholders across the state continues.

Through the 2015 statewide water planning process, basin roundtables—stakeholder groups who have been working together on a regional, river-basin-wide scale to develop water priorities, assessments and goals—developed Basin Implementation Plans. All of the eight plans identified the need for new, restored or better-maintained storage.

“Storage is going to remain a focus moving forward,” says Garrett Varra, chair of the South Platte Basin Roundtable. “It’s getting more specific, more dialed in, with more interest from more and more parties and the benefits [of new storage] just keep multiplying.”

“Storage is going to remain a focus moving forward.”

ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS hile undeniably beneficial to Colorado water users, storage projects, even those designed to incur low impacts, alter the environment by interrupting natural hydrology.

“When you change the hydrology, you change the water, you change everything,” says Julie Ash, a senior restoration engineer at Stillwater Sciences. Ash explains that when a dam is built, it alters the amount, peak, duration and timing of flows, which in turn changes the way sediment moves in the stream channel, which then changes the shape of the channel and affects the habitat available to fish and wildlife. Changes in hydrology also affect the species of fish that thrive in Colorado’s rivers, a fish’s ability to reproduce, water temperature, and the migration patterns of birds, which are tuned to peak runoff and base flows.

A natural flow pattern on an undammed,

—Garrett Varra South Platte Basin Roundtable

W

As the roundtables update their Basin Implementation Plans this year, many continue to focus on storage as an important strategy to use alongside others to meet future water demands. The South Platte Basin, which faces the largest projected shortfall in water available for municipal and industrial uses of any basin in the state, with a projected maximum annual gap of up to 540,700 acre-feet per year, is among them. Additional storage could help meet part of that projected gap, including projects that are working through the permitting process from Northern Water, Denver Water, the City of Fort Collins, and others.

Colorado Water Storage Through the Decades Development of the reservoirs that Coloradans still rely on began in the mid-1800s and continues today, totaling around 7.5 million acre-feet of storage capacity. While the largest amount of storage volume was constructed in the 1960s, the greatest number of dams were built in the early 1900s.

Amount of Storage Created, by Volume by Decade 2.0 million acre-feet of storage capacity 1,880,864

1.5

1,053,521

1.0

923,541 743,233

683,738 0.5

670,729

479,710 365,469 222,622

0

111,981

101,703

168,248

89,689

4,565

8,279

43,875

1860s

1870s

1880s

1890s

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

5

23

74

134

290

148

85

116

148

266

275

179

98

50

55

17

Source: Colorado Division of Water Resources

Charles Chamberlin

Number of Dams Built by Decade

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

13

Bison graze at Terry Ranch in northern Colorado. Below them lies an aquifer, where Greeley is purchasing 1.2 million acre-feet of groundwater and storage rights.

G R E E L E Y | Underground Storage at Terry Ranch

W

ith a quickly growing population—projected to jump from 106,000 to more than 260,000 by 2065—and a thriving agricultural community, Greeley developed a 2003 water master plan that identified an urgent need for additional storage. The preferred option was expanding the 5,008 acrefoot Milton Seaman Reservoir in the North Fork of the Poudre River to hold 53,000 acre-feet.

Expanding Milton Seaman would require large excavations, adjusting infrastructure in bedrock, and flooding additional land. The permitting process alone stretched for more than 15 years, and estimated project costs ballooned to more than $500 million.

In 2019, an alternative emerged: an underground aquifer on Terry Ranch, a private property near the Wyoming border. Greeley will purchase 1.2 million acrefeet of groundwater and storage rights from owners Wingfoot Water Resources, offering a new water supply and more storage than the planned reservoir expansion with less permitting and construction. Groundwater will be pumped out of the aquifer for use, but the aquifer can also be used for additional storage.

“Instead of impounding the river and surrounding habitat, we’re putting wells into the ground. We’re not touching any streams or other wetlands,” says Adam Jokerst, deputy director of water resources for Greeley.

Mere months after identifying the opportunity, Greeley began permitting and testing to make sure the water would be safe. Though the surrounding soil contains some naturally occuring uranium and other contaminants, the city says it is able to treat any water it extracts so the contaminants are at “non-detectable” levels. Not everyone is pleased; an activist group called Save Greeley’s Water opposes what it says is a rushed and risky project.

“I’m probably never going to feel confident about the groundwater up there. In an emergency, we could flush a reservoir, but the groundwater can’t be cleaned,” said John Gauthiere, a former engineer for the City of Greeley, on a Zoom meeting of the group in February.

Despite those concerns, the project was approved unanimously by the Greeley City Council and the Water and Sewer Board. With the approval in March, construction can begin as soon as 2022 and will be phased over many years. As for the work put into Milton Seaman? It's on hold for now, but Jokerst says, “100 years from now, it's hard to say whether or not we’ll want additional reservoir storage.”

—JASON PLAUTZ

14 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

undiverted river in Colorado reveals a high peak every spring. Then, as snow disappears, streamflows drop to “base flow” levels, the lowest sustained flow level.

“Everything evolved to that [natural] flow regime,” says Johannes Beeby, Ash’s colleague, a hydrologist at Stillwater Sciences.

The effects of on-channel reservoir storage are widely publicized but tiny diversions, too, can cause an additive impact. Take, for example, the Poudre River, home to numerous diversions of all sizes.

“It’s super fragmented. It’s about the river being chopped up lots of times,” says Jennifer Shanahan, a watershed planner for the City of Fort Collins’ Natural Areas Program. Whether it’s a large diversion or many small ones, “it’s the same thing—they take water off and cut sediment flows,” she says. The diversions cause blockage to aquatic communities, fisheries, water flows and sediment, pulling water off of the river and away to small reservoirs dotted across northeastern Colorado. “We’ve seen over time the decrease in the native diversity of fish in our river,” Shanahan says.

But recognizing these impacts creates an opening for improvement. The City of Fort Collins, after Shanahan’s department led the way on a river health assessment, is working on floodplain restoration along the Poudre River. Plus, new water storage projects including the Northern Integrated Supply Project and Halligan Water Supply Project are partners on the Poudre Flows Project and are including some water for instream flows into their operations to keep water in the Poudre River. “We have a huge legacy but we also have an opportunity,” Shanahan says.

MITIGATION AND ENHANCEMENT xtensive federal, state and local permitting processes are in place to minimize and mitigate, or directly offset, the impact of water storage projects. Mitigation is typically required in permitting to offset impact, so, for example, if a new storage project is going to fill in an acre of wetlands, an acre of wetlands work will be substituted elsewhere.

Approval to construct a storage project can take decades but the aim of permitting is to strike a balance: to protect the state’s natural resources and give the public a voice, while also providing a path for water providers and others to pursue the projects needed to support Coloradans. For project

E

Courtesy City of Greeley

proponents, mitigation work can be prohibitively time consuming and expensive, and yet, mitigation doesn’t always go far enough.

That’s where “enhancement” projects come in. These are efforts by project proponents that go beyond the required mitigation of expected project impacts to actually improve and repair existing stream conditions.

Beeby, Ash and the Stillwater team are working with Denver Water, Northern Water and Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) on an enhancement project at the Kemp Breeze State Wildlife Area, which sits alongside the Colorado River in Grand County. It’s downstream of the West Slope Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) Project reservoirs and Denver Water’s Williams Fork Reservoir. By the time the Colorado River reaches Kemp Breeze, about 60% of natural flows have been diverted, stored and transported across the Continental Divide to the Front Range. Here, in addition to depleted flows, dams have significantly altered the historical hydrology and impacted riffles, leading to a decline in populations of giant stonefly, sculpin and trout. “[This stretch of the Colorado River] has been frozen in time since like the 1930s,” says Beeby—construction began on the cluster of nearby dams and transbasin diversions in the late ’30s. Comparing a photograph today to a photo of the river taken in 1938, the width, depth and shape haven’t naturally meandered or changed—it’s identical, he says, because of the managed flow regime.

Its level of ecological function is similar to that of a concrete canal.

Through Denver Water’s proposed Gross Reservoir Expansion Project and Northern Water’s Windy Gap Firming Project, the water providers created Fish and Wildlife Enhancement Plans and signed an intergovernmental agreement with CPW to restore a 16.7-mile stretch of river between Windy Gap Reservoir and Kemp Breeze.

If their storage projects are approved, Northern Water’s Municipal Subdistrict will contribute $4 million and Denver Water will contribute $2 million to this restoration site.

Some additional funds will come from CPW and Learning By Doing.

The plan at Kemp Breeze is to fix base processes so the river can restore itself, stretching the impact of the investment in the river because, while $7 million sounds like a lot of money, it won’t touch the full 16.7-mile stretch of river. To fix those

Charles Chamberlin

“When new reservoir construction happens, it will change the landscape forever.”

—Ken Kehmeier Retired from Colorado Parks and Wildlife

processes, Stillwater plans to do gravel augmentation (dumping sediment below the dam), narrow the channel, and install wood structures that will restore sediment transport processes. Denver Water and Northern Water will also avoid capturing peak flows for three days each year, allowing natural hydrology to do its job by flushing the river and moving sediment. Eventually, CPW will

monitor the project and, through Learning

By Doing, try a different tact if the stream isn’t functioning as planned.

Mitigation is always a negotiated compromise, says Ken Kehmeier, a former senior aquatic biologist and mitigation specialist with CPW, now retired. Mitigation overseen

by CPW during the permitting process is guided by statute that directs the agency to find a balance between the needs of fish and wildlife resources and the need to develop.

It takes a lot of conversation and foresight to develop a project while minimizing and mitigating impacts, he says. And, while mitigation is important, so is the careful consideration of which projects are built.

“When new reservoir construction happens, it will change the landscape forever,” Kehmeier says. “The need for reservoir storage is a reality, but so are the associated impacts to natural resources and people. So there needs to be a very deliberate choice, a conscientious choice about what we're doing,

Colorado River Average Daily Flow at Hot Sulphur Springs During the early 1900s, the Colorado River’s headwaters near Hot Sulphur Springs displayed a nearly natural hydrograph with flows peaking in June during spring runoff, then tapering off through winter. Upstream diversions, including Denver Water's Moffat Tunnel that started diverting in 1936, and reservoir development cut peak flows on this section of the Colorado River, just upstream of the Kemp Breeze State Wildlife Area.

Daily streamflow (cubic feet per second) 6,000

Average 1905–1949: Before Colorado–Big Thompson (C-BT) Project Average 1950–1984: After C-BT and before Windy Gap Project Average 1985–2008: After Windy Gap Project

5,000

Highest Flow Year: 1907 Lowest Flow Year: 2002 4,000

3,000

2,000

1,000

0

OCT

NOV

DEC

JAN

FEB

MAR

APR

MAY

JUN

JUL

AUG

SEP

Source: Windy Gap Firming Project Final Environmental Impact Statement

LISTEN TO RIVERS MAKING MUSIC

Hear these hydrographs transposed into song.

Check out tinyurl.com/2ex5jpmw

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

15

why we're doing it. Then, how do we protect or enhance the environment to the greatest extent possible?”

BUILDING SMARTER STORAGE ime will bring more challenges and successes as storage is built and mitigation—and sometimes enhancement—is implemented. “It’s not about if [reservoirs] get built, it’s how they get built,” says Russ Sands, chief of the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s Water Supply Section. Sands sees his agency’s role as one that convenes and advances conversations so that new water storage is built in smart, multi-purpose ways. “How do we advance storage in a way that minimizes impact and maximizes benefits?” he asks.

The state is incentivizing, and projects are being planned, with built-in environmental benefits, such as Fort Collins’ Halligan Water Supply Project, which will rehabilitate and raise an existing dam, then use some of the reservoir’s expanded capacity to release year-round minimum flows to prevent stream dry-up. Others are being devised as system-wide collaborative projects, like the South Platte Regional Opportunities Water Group (SPROWG), where a series of reservoirs, pipelines, and complex water rights exchanges between water users throughout the South Platte Basin could significantly lessen the need for any single, large and likely more environmentally damaging project. Then there are projects that focus on taking advantage of natural infrastructure, such as underground aquifer storage and recovery, or even work to improve soil health and forest health, boosting the landscape’s capacity to retain water.

With all of these projects, water storage isn’t the only answer to Colorado’s water supply challenges. “Cities and water users have several options to find water,” says Varra.

Capturing excess flows during peak runoff with these storage buckets is just one of them, though some degree of storage enables other water supply solutions too. Water reuse projects often rely on some amount of storage as water cycles through treatment systems. Alternatives to agricultural water transfers, which help avoid buy and dry through water sharing agreements, typically rely on the flexibility to divert and re-time water that is enabled by storage. It’s all part of the water supply puzzle.

“To be successful, we have to be successful in all of these things,” Sands says. H

T

Deb Daniel, manager of the Republican River Water Conservation District, stands in front of the former Bonny Reservoir, which was drained in 2012. Now Daniel is working to restore the riparian area behind the dam.

R E PUBL I CAN | Restoring Now-Dry Bonny Reservoir

I

n 2012, Bonny Reservoir, which sits some 12 miles west of the Kansas border on the South Fork of the Republican River, went dry. After 60 years of holding water, Bonny was drained and numerous wells were voluntarily retired to help Colorado send water east to comply with the Republican River Compact. In a region reliant almost entirely on groundwater, aquifer depletions had depressed surface water flows, and wells were shut off to get enough water across the state line. In draining Bonny, the Republican River Compact Administration released Colorado from insurmountable seepage and evaporation water charges, freeing up more water for compact compliance with downstream states.

“The year it was being drained it just made my heart sick,” says Deb Daniel, general manager of the Republican River Water Conservation District, which works to achieve compact compliance, primarily by purchasing and leasing surface water rights and paying for the retirement of agricultural acreage.

For Daniel, attachment to Bonny Reservoir is personal and generational. She had four family members drown in the devastating 1935 flood that killed more than 100 people and sparked the construction of the dam. She grew up on the reservoir and learned to water ski on it, as did almost everyone else who lived nearby, she says. In Bonny’s prime, people would stop in surrounding towns for fishing licenses, food and lodging en route to the reservoir. It was the only large water body around. “It had an impact on several different communities in Colorado,” Daniel says. It drew migratory birds too. “All of that is gone, they found a different route to take,” she says.

The dam remains for flood control, but where water once stood and where a natural channel could run, invasive plants like Russian olives have taken hold, with deep root systems that drink up any whisper of flowing surface water.

While nostalgic for Bonny as a recreational and economic asset, Daniel continues to focus efforts on its site. She’s stewarding a stream management plan, along with other partners, with the aim of restoring recreation and a healthy channel for the South Fork of the Republican River to flow.—CAITLIN COLEMAN

16 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

Whitney Hansen Photography

As a collective group of Colorado agriculture cooperatives, we want to express our utmost appreciation and gratitude for all the local water systems, associations, educators and advocators in Colorado. We understand the value water has on agriculture and the value it brings to everyone who visits, works and lives in this great state.

Roggen Farmers’ Elevator Association Agfinity, Inc. Monte Vista Cooperative Poudre Valley Cooperative Association, Inc. The Stratton Equity Cooperative Company Paoli Farmers Cooperative Elevator Company Flagler Cooperative Association Peetz Farmers Cooperative Company CoBank, ACB

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

17

THE WAY WE BANK Thinking Beyond the Dam

T

o address the water needs of a growing population amid shortages, the Colorado Water Plan in 2015 set a goal of attaining 400,000 acre-feet of new water storage by 2050.

Colorado is working its way toward that goal, but building new storage is easier said than done. Increasing environmental and social concerns, limited geographic locations, and even more limited water rights have made many traditional reservoir storage projects tougher to build. On top of that, long-range forecasting—to figure out how much water is going to be available to be stored—has become especially difficult as a result of climate change.

An April 2020 study published in the journal Science found that the American West’s current drought is as bad or worse than any in the past 1,200 years of tree-ring records. Ordinarily, storage would be the obvious solution to drought and dry years.

You collect moisture in wet years and save it for times of need. But climate change has created a catch-22. Storage may be necessary, but it has become more challenging to build and less water is available to capture.

Dan Luecke, former director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Rocky

Mountain office, says these challenges have upended a philosophy long built on risk analysis to one defined by “decision-making under uncertainty.”

“For a long time, we’ve known there’s risk but we could look to the historical record to manage it,” says Luecke. (Luecke also serves on the Water Education Colorado Board of Trustees). “With climate change, that record is called into question ... The nature of the game has changed.”

The cascading challenges of climate change have led water managers to think creatively about alternatives to traditional infrastructure. Greeley, for example, replaced a plan to expand an existing reservoir with one that will store water underground. Front Range districts collaborated to reallocate the space in Chatfield Reservoir, a flood storage basin, raising the water level to add permanent water storage supply. As part of the Basin Implementation Plan for the Yampa/White/Green River Basin, water managers are exploring

BY JASON PLAUTZ 18 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

William Woody

Safety inspectors walk on top of the Crystal Dam in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in May 2008, when high snowpack and warm temperatures prompted reservoir managers to make more room through a managed release, or spill. The reservoir spilled most recently in May 2019.

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

19

Leon Basdekas, pictured beside Monument Creek, worked with Colorado Springs Utilities using a machine learning tool to help the water provider assess complex future water supply and demand scenarios and evaluate where new water storage could be beneficial.

putting reservoirs high in the mountains to limit evaporative loss.

Decision-making under uncertainty makes it all the more complicated for water providers to meet Colorado’s water needs and has caused many to reexamine what a smart storage project is made of—one that can help meet water supply goals for many water users while respecting the environment, one that is also acceptable to stakeholders, and one with minimum impacts so that it can make its way through the permitting process. Water managers are growing increasingly innovative, out of necessity, to develop water storage projects that will work.

RESERVOIRS UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE It's not simply a matter of how much water is available to store. Everything from the location and size of reservoirs to the timing for capturing runoff and for making releases is being reviewed. Various climate models, including those used by the Colorado Water Conservation Board for state water planning, project warmer temperatures that will affect evaporation rates in rivers and reservoirs and seasonal shifts in precipitation, including reduced mountain snowpack and earlier runoff. Earlier and reduced flows 20 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

“A dam is a bit like opening a bank account, there has to be something to put in it. Ultimately, everything bends to the hydrological realities of what the supply is.”

—Brad Udall, Colorado State University

could, for instance, necessitate dams releasing water earlier to meet demand.

Temperature rise, too, makes storing water a challenge. Any pool will lose water through evaporation, and more during hot, dry times, but the loss is worse for reservoirs at lower elevations with more exposed surface area. The science used to estimate evaporative loss is imprecise—estimates could be off by as much as 20 to 30 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which is conducting a study to refine its methods. Even so, a 2018 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society study estimated that losses from Lake Powell and Lake Mead could total as much as 15% of the annual upper basin allocation among Colorado River Basin states, or five to six times the annual water use of Denver. The

same study said that summer evaporation rates may have risen by as much as 6% over the last 25 years.

The National Climate Assessment, published in 2018, states that climate change is fueling stronger storms that could overwhelm dams and infrastructure designed to capture more moderate storm surge flows.

It’s also intensifying wildfires that destroy landscapes, load reservoirs with sediment, and threaten water delivery infrastructure.

The 2019 Technical Update to the Colorado Water Plan lays out a number of alternatives to new traditional storage projects, including rehabilitating existing infrastructure, reallocating flood storage to active storage, and using below-ground aquifer storage alternatives. While the options are vast, the update says that to meet the state’s Matthew Staver

goals, “at least some new large reservoirs are needed.”

But building those reservoirs also requires water to fill them, says Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University. Water rights are not as easy to come by in an era of constraint. Any new water rights claimed today are junior in the state’s legal priority system, making storage necessary to capture peak flows after all senior water rights are satisfied. But as climate change shifts the timing and magnitude of peak flows, reservoirs may not be as effective a tool for managing junior water rights.

“A dam is a bit like opening a bank account, there has to be something to put in it,” Udall says. “Ultimately, everything bends to the hydrological realities of what the supply is.”

THE JIGSAW PUZZLE The era of uncertainty doesn’t just make individual storage projects a puzzle—the long-range plans that help utilities figure out what storage they need are now a tangle of variables. Balancing climate-complicated precipitation projections with population and water use trends, regulatory changes, and competition for resources can make the standard planning process a head-spinning endeavor.

When Colorado Springs Utilities started updating its 2017 Integrated Water Resource Plan (IWRP), the utility wanted a “comprehensive view” that would take a hard look at risk analysis, says water planner Kevin Lusk. Colorado Springs doesn't sit on a major river system and relies on storage in remote watersheds to manage its variable supply. In the early 2000s, the utility’s water yield saw a 600% difference between the driest and wettest years.

Realizing that a backward-looking dataset might no longer apply to a present and future defined by climate change, the utility took a state-of-the-art new approach to its planning process. Recently, Colorado Springs partnered with the consulting firm Black and Veatch, which expanded the multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) to utilities to help them assess the complexities in planning. The machine learning tool can project thousands of possible futures using precipitation, temperature and hydrological factors, then help planners narrow down their range of possible options.

“As these plans get so big, it’s hard for the Courtesy Chatfield Reallocation Project

In Chatfield State Park, restoration work on Plum Creek, which flows into Chatfield Reservoir, has included streambed stabilization, planting and seeding of riparian and wetland vegetation to control erosion and provide habitat, plus a new trail system beside the reclaimed creek.

C HAT F IE LD | Repurposing Flood Control For Water Storage

T

he Chatfield Reservoir south of Littleton was built as a flood control measure after the devastating floods in 1965 and is the centerpiece of a beloved state park. But it now serves a new purpose: providing more water storage for the Front Range without adding a major footprint. After a three-decade planning process, the reservoir level was raised 12 feet and storage space has been reallocated to add 20,600 acre-feet of storage, including an environmental pool of up to 2,100 acre-feet.

“At first blush, this doesn’t sound so complicated. You're taking water storage that already exists and making it multi-purpose storage without any impacts to the dam itself,” says Charly Hoehn, general manager of the reallocation project.

But it was the first project of its kind in the state, so Hoehn’s team had to act as “guinea pigs'' on permitting and mitigation issues.

While the project didn’t require new dam construction, it was not without challenges. State park facilities had to be moved, and there were environmental concerns, like the removal of trees and wetlands to accommodate the higher water level. The Audubon Society of Greater Denver unsuccessfully sued to stop construction, citing impacts to birds and the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse. Polly Reetz, the Audubon conservation committee chairperson, says she continues to question “whether this would even work at all” with the project’s relatively junior water rights and doesn't think it was worth impacting “a very important birding area.”

Other green groups worked with project organizers on a mitigation strategy that placed a value on each piece of land that would be affected (accounting for impacts to wetlands and animals), then found other areas to offset any damage.

The result was significant restoration to flows on nearby Plum Creek and bank stabilization primarily upstream on the South Platte River to prevent erosion.

The environmental pool will accommodate timed releases to help address some low-flow conditions downstream on the South Platte River. Final approval and the completion of mitigation work in 2020 allowed the new storage to begin, but Hoehn says that the low spring runoff allowed only a “marginal amount” to be stored in its first year.—JASON PLAUTZ

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

21

Jim Yahn, manager of the North Sterling Irrigation District, stands on the structure where water is diverted from the South Platte River to Prewitt Reservoir. A deal with Parker Water could mean repairs for Prewitt and new water storage for eastern Colorado.

LOWER SOUTH PLATTE & PARKER | Working With Farmers

F

or the Parker Water and Sanitation District, collaboration is a guiding principle when it comes to water storage. To add supply for its 50,000-person Douglas County district and surrounding agricultural users, Parker acquired land that had water rights in Prewitt Reservoir, the 32,000 acre-foot reservoir south of Sterling, which it could pump more than 100 miles south to store in its own reservoirs. The Prewitt Reservoir was built for sugar beet farmers in northeastern Colorado, where North Sterling Irrigation District manager Jim Yahn says he worries that having municipalities draw from it could end up taking storage from agricultural users. Yahn encouraged Parker to consider a way to serve all users, including farmers.

“Buy and dry is the old way, and on the one hand, it's probably easier to do it that old way. But it’s not the right way,” says Ron Redd, executive director for Parker Water. “Farmers have knowledge and they’ve helped us out on what we can and can’t do. When multiple stakeholders benefit, it’s a win all around.”

Parker is now looking at two new reservoirs, both on the Eastern Plains: a 6,000-7,000 acre-foot site near Iliff, northeast of Sterling, and, eventually, a 72,000 acre-foot site near Fremont Butte, southwest of Sterling and still some 100 miles from Parker’s Rueter-Hess Reservoir. Not only will they serve Parker, but through a partnership with the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District, local agricultural users could draw from the reservoirs as well. The project will efficiently convey water through existing and improved Prewitt infrastructure.

Project partners are still working out how to share the water, but Yahn says the partnership represents a new way of thinking. “Even if agriculture can't afford a new storage project, a new storage project can incorporate agriculture.” Parker will offset some maintenance costs for Prewitt when it draws from the reservoir as part of a deal Yahn describes as “a little like a toll road.”

Redd says the deal is just the start of work that could continue with the collaborative South Platte Regional Opportunities Water Group.

“Partnerships are hard and that’s why most people used to go it alone,” Redd says. “But our customers pay us to do the hard work and we’re seeing a lot more benefits when we partner with other districts.”—JASON PLAUTZ

human mind to comprehend them,” says Leon Basdekas, a private consultant who worked at Colorado Springs Utilities, then Black and Veatch, designing and managing the utility’s IWRP. “This tool allows you to evaluate complex planning options in ways that would be impossible to do otherwise.”

For Colorado Springs, the advanced IWRP process helped water planners see a range of climate and streamflow possibilities, then identify 14 storage options that could meet future water demand. Some, like a potential new reservoir on Williams Creek or one upstream of Rampart Reservoir, have been under discussion for years. Others are more general concepts without specific sites, such as gravel pit storage along the Arkansas River. Among those identified projects, Colorado Springs has also been exploring Eagle River storage options, including the potential Whitney Reservoir, to collect and store Western Slope water, although nearby towns and others have objected to possible impacts on the Holy Cross Wilderness Area. Lusk says Whitney Creek alternatives are “one of many possibilities” and that the IWRP analysis even considers “less tangible characteristics” like community values and opposition to any individual project when optimizing storage opportunities.

More than anything, Lusk says, the advanced modeling helped the utility gain a better appreciation for the full scope of storage and transmission. The “a-ha moment,” he says, is seeing how one individual new reservoir may not mean as much for the system as, say, shoring up existing pipelines to make the already-built system run more efficiently.

“We can’t just look at storage on its own, it’s a package deal with supply and conveyance,” Lusk says. “This is a complex jigsaw puzzle.”

WHEN MITIGATION MEETS ENHANCEMENT To the north, the Northern Integrated Supply Project, or NISP, has been moving through a decades-long process to obtain the necessary permits and to gain the favor of local stakeholders. NISP has been reshaped, with operational changes and environmental improvements now built in, in response to stakeholder concerns.

Northern Water’s project, if fully C O N T I N U E D O N PAG E 2 4

22 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

Vickie Smith

THE ANATOMY OF AN "ENHANCED" WATER STORAGE PROJECT Northern Water’s Northern Integrated Supply Project (NISP), some 40 years in the making, aims to deliver 40,000 acre-feet of water annually to 15 northern Colorado towns and districts to meet growing needs. The proposed project includes two new reservoirs, ditch improvements, pipelines and other infrastructure. In response to community concerns, NISP has been reshaped over time to better mitigate impacts, provide environmental benefits, and keep water in agriculture.

Glade Reservoir

U.S. Highway 287 Realignment

170,000 acre-feet

1,380 acre habitat conservation area

Wellington

Poudre Valley Canal

Glade Forebay

Galeton Reservoir

25 25

45,600 acre-feet

C

Cobb Lake

85

NISP Delivery Pipeline

12 river miles of enhanced flow along the Poudre

14

Fort Collins Horsetooth Reservoir

Galeton Pipeline

Ault

14

Larimer & Weld Canal

2

B Eaton

Severance

B New Cache Canal 287

Windsor

25

oudre River Cache la P

1

A

Loveland

Greeley

34

Bi gT ho mp so

n Ri v e r

WaterSecure Exchanges

NISP's Key Environmental Commitments

25,000 acre-feet/year will be exchanged between ditch companies and NISP. Farmers receive water from the project and NISP compensates the ditch systems with water, improvements and cash.

1 Fish and Wildlife Enhancement Plan

A Water is diverted from the South B C

Platte River by the Galeton Pipeline to fill Galeton Reservoir The pipeline also delivers Galeton water to the New Cache and Larimer & Weld canals The canal systems leave water they are entitled to in the Poudre, where it is used to fill Glade

h ut So

te at Pl

r ve Ri

34

• $1 million River Master Plan development • $5.9 million to implement and monitor adaptive management measures • Flushing flow commitments not to divert peak flows into Glade Reservoir every 2 out of 3 years • Releases from Glade Reservoir to eliminate Poudre dry-up points • Fish passage structures at four diversion dams • 2.4 miles of stream channel improvement projects, including floodplain channel connectivity restoration • Nearly 100 acres of riparian vegetation improvements

2 401 Water Quality Certification

• Nearly $2.5 million in E.coli and nutrient reduction measures • 10 acres of wetlands enhancements for water quality improvements • 1 mile of stream channel enhancements for temperature improvements

NISP Participants BOULDER COUNTY Erie, Lafayette, Left Hand Water District

LARIMER COUNTY Fort Collins-Loveland Water District

MORGAN COUNTY Fort Morgan, Morgan County Quality Water District

WELD COUNTY Central Weld County Water District, Dacono, Eaton, Erie, Evans, Firestone, Fort Lupton, Frederick, Severance, Windsor Source: Northern Water

Charles Chamberlin

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

23

The Cache la Poudre River through Fort Collins encounters many small diversions and has historically faced dry-up points. Through the Northern Integrated Supply Project (NISP), Northern Water, though diverting water upstream, has committed to stream-channel improvements and revegetation, E. coli and nutrient reduction measures, yearround streamflows, and more.

C O N T I N U E D F RO M PAG E 2 2

approved, will build two reservoirs, one northwest of Fort Collins off the Cache la Poudre River and another northeast of Greeley, to deliver nearly 40,000 acre-feet of water a year to 15 communities and irrigators along the Front Range. With the population of northern Colorado expected to double by 2050, backers say that such a large shared storage project is necessary to efficiently serve booming towns like Erie, Windsor and Severance. Through water exchanges with farmers—which will average about 25,000 acre-feet per year—and the purchase of conservation easements on farms, Northern Water says the project will also help farmers reduce the negative impacts of buy and dry by keeping water on farms while serving the growing Front Range population.

But supplying those growing towns will necessarily require impacts. NISP will involve constructing the 170,000 acre-foot Glade Reservoir (to accommodate the reservoir, seven miles of U.S. Highway 287 will be relocated) and the 45,600 acre-foot Galeton Reservoir. Northern Water will also build another forebay reservoir, five pump plants, and 80 miles of pipeline.

That kind of construction naturally 24 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

“We really changed our perspective to thinking about how we could put water back and be a part of the preservation of the Poudre River.”

—Carl Brouwer, Northern Water

attracted opposition from environmentalists and some communities. Concerns include that taking water out of the already-stressed Poudre River could reduce its crucial spring peak flows, which flush sediment downriver and restore habitat.

Several environmental reviews as part of the permitting process concluded that the need for storage was there, even after accounting for planned water conservation savings. With so many communities involved, scrapping the collaborative project, as some environmental groups advocated for, would leave them all competing for limited resources.

“I think quite a few participants who saw [NISP] as a [potential] future supply are now looking at this as the future,” says Christopher Smith, general manager of the Left

Hand Water District and chairman of the NISP participants committee. “I don’t think anyone is left who is speculating on this. It’s necessary.”

So Northern Water started looking for what project manager Carl Brouwer calls “the wow factor.”

“We really changed our perspective to thinking about how we could put water back and be a part of the preservation of the Poudre River,” Brouwer says.

Project proponents added an estimated $60 million in mitigation and enhancement measures, bringing the total estimated project cost to about $1.1 billion. The idea is that water would be released from Glade Reservoir year round and no water will be diverted to storage when flows dip below 50 cubic feet per second (cfs) in the summer Flickr User JeffreyJDavis

and 25 cfs in the winter to eliminate spots where the river already dries up. Collection operations will be adjusted to keep peak flows in the Poudre River two out of every three years, and 90% of the time little or no diversion will take place during peak flows.

Organizers will also build new fish passage structures and improve 2.4 miles of stream channel near a Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) fish hatchery north of Fort Collins.

The mitigation and enhancement plan received unanimous approval from CPW and the Colorado Water Conservation Board in 2017, and the Colorado Water Quality Control Division approved the project’s 401 Water Quality Certification in 2020. NISP has continued moving through the federal permitting process, with final approval expected this spring or summer.

Karlyn Armstrong, water project mitigation coordinator for CPW, says that the flow program will be a benefit to the river.

“Currently the river goes dry in places — once the program comes online, the river will have water 365 days a year through the conveyance flow reach,” Armstrong says.

“Aquatic life will benefit from sustained minimum flows.”

Critics remain. In August 2020, the Fort Collins City Council voted 5-1 to oppose the project, citing the potential loss of spring flows, and some environmentalists say communities should explore options with less of an environmental footprint.

But Brouwer says that the project, combined with Northern’s efforts on conservation and water exchanges, should set the new standard for infrastructure in the state with its environmental focus.

“What really changed was embracing the enhancement part of mitigation and enhancement. We can make it better,” Brouwer says. “We've set the bar pretty high and I do think this will become the norm.”

ADDRESSING DEMAND Improved or not, some still say a large storage project like NISP shouldn’t happen at all.

Boulder-based Western Resource Advocates has been a long-time opponent of NISP and in 2012 released an alternative plan it said could meet the needs of Front Range communities without the footprint of new infrastructure. The nonprofit’s “Better Future” alternative included conservation tools that would offset 20,482 acre-feet of use by 2060 and apply reuse technology to another Matthew Staver

John Kaufman, general manager of Centennial Water and Sanitation District, stands in front of the district’s aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) well.

C E N T E N N IA L | Colorado's First ASR Project

W

hen John Kaufman worked as an engineer and water quality consultant in Florida, the landscape was conducive for aquifer storage and recovery (ASR). With Florida’s limestone bedrock, plentiful supplies, and friendly regulatory climate, Kaufman helped several cities set up systems to inject and store water underground to later be withdrawn and treated for residential use.

In 2014, when Kaufman moved west to become general manager of the Centennial Water and Sanitation District in Highlands Ranch, he was surprised to find an environment just as friendly to ASR. Centennial had opened the state’s first such system in the 1990s, using the permeable aquifer as a storage alternative when large reservoirs were harder to come by.

“The geology may be different here, but the principle is still the same,” Kaufman says. “It can be an effective way to take water and store it if the surface reservoirs aren’t available.”

The district is particularly suited for underground storage, with permeable ground and a location near the South Platte River where high spring flows can be captured and stored in the aquifer. With a water treatment plant conveniently nearby, Centennial can also efficiently treat and deliver the water. Highlands Ranch has added about 14,000 acre-feet of water into the ASR network over the three-decade lifespan of the project. Even though surface water currently provides upwards of 80% of the district’s water (a percentage set to increase with storage rights in Chatfield Reservoir), Kaufman is still committed to storing and recharging the aquifer whenever possible.

Kaufman sees potential for ASR across the state and is open to offering Centennial’s advice. While he hasn’t fielded many calls, some water providers— including the Consolidated Mutual Water Company in Lakewood—have implemented ASR. Several south Denver metro-area water providers are permitting wells for future below-ground water storage “ASR has a lot of potential, but you can’t do it everywhere,” Kaufman says.

—JASON PLAUTZ

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

25

Deirdre Macnab with the 4M Ranch rests after a horseback ride. Macnab has grazing rights on land in the valley that would be inundated by the White River Storage Project’s reservoir, if built.

W H I T E R I VE R | Facing Drought (and Oppostion) in Rural Colorado

D

ierdre Macnab’s 13,000-acre 4M Ranch produces beef and hay on high desert land along the White River in Rio Blanco County. And if the Rio Blanco Water Conservancy District is successful in moving a project forward, she could soon abut a water storage site on a stretch of public land where she has grazing rights for her cattle.

The conservancy district applied for a 90,000 acre-foot water storage right in 2014 for an off-channel reservoir on the White River for the town of Rangely and the surrounding area. That was later reduced to 66,720 acre-feet for a reservoir to sit between Rangely and Meeker. Macnab says she’s not against creating more water storage and would even cede some of her land to make it happen, but not for this project.

“If you’re going to add additional storage ... then it should be in a location more strategic than a flat, high-desert area that would only benefit a small population,” says Macnab, who was for a time the sole opposer to the project. The state Division of Water Resources (DWR) also filed motions opposing the project, questioning whether the conservancy district had demonstrated a clear need for the supply.

Conservancy district manager Alden Vanden Brink, however, says the reservoir is vital for the downriver communities, where there is not currently a drought contingency plan. Rio Blanco and Moffatt counties have junior water rights and the prospect of a Colorado River compact call, he says, is a “crisis getting ready to happen.” He adds that the location was one of 23 sites reviewed and was preferred by the board because it did not require inundating any private land.

A January 2021 water court settlement between DWR and the conservancy district cleared the rights for Rio Blanco's project, although it prevents the water from being used for irrigation, endangered fish, or augmentation in the event of a compact call. The conservancy district will now begin seeking the necessary permits.

Macnab says she is disappointed but is glad she made her voice heard to protect the landscape. “The White River is a unique river in this very rural part of the state, and it’s a critical component for our quality of life here,” she says.

—JASON PLAUTZ

26 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

4,905 acre-feet. Combined with flexible water sharing agreements between agricultural users and municipalities and more thoughtful expansion onto previously irrigated agricultural land that could come with water rights, WRA says their plan reimagines what adding supply could look like.

“We know we need more storage going forward, but new storage doesn’t have to be connected to new development,” says Laura Belanger, water resources engineer at Western Resource Advocates. “Alternative supply portfolios that include reuse or conservation can mean storage that optimizes existing supplies more efficiently.”

WRA’s plan as an alternative to NISP was rejected in 2018, as were all other alternatives proposed during the public comment period, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued NISP’s Environmental Impact Statement, saying that these options “did not meet the project’s purpose and need and practicability screening criteria.” WRA says it relies on different calculations than the economic reports backing NISP and has continued to update its alternative in a series of recent comments on the NISP proposal.

Whether or not it could replace NISP, the “Better Future” model represents how some are thinking about limiting demand as a way to reduce the need for additional storage.

Aggressive conservation has started to decouple water use from population growth in some cities across the West; a survey of 20 Western cities published in the journal Water found that between 2000 and 2015, total water use dropped 19% while populations increased by 21% on average. Denver Water has reduced per capita water use by 22% over the past decade.

The City of Aurora has also made conservation and reuse a foundational part of its water plan, including more efficient landscaping requirements, rebates for low water-use appliances, and requirements that new developers make their buildings less wasteful. Tim York, the city’s water conservation supervisor, estimates that it costs about $600 in staff time and resources for each acre-foot of water conserved, compared to about $25,000 per acre-foot for water acquired on the open market.

That doesn't mean Aurora isn't looking for more storage. The city is moving ahead on the proposed Wild Horse Reservoir project, a 96,000 acre-foot storage site in Park County.

Courtesy 4M Ranch

“There's always going to be more to be done from conservation and efficiency. At the same time, you can only get so low,” says York. “You get to a point where you need storage. The mindset that you can conserve your way out of any drought is just not realistic.”

Many small- and medium-sized utilities don't have the staff to mirror Aurora’s efforts, but Belanger says that the strain on resources under the drought makes it necessary for all municipalities to embrace conservation.

“The more efficient existing and new development is, the more water you can have in the supply,” Belanger says. “Managing the demands of your community produces sustainable savings.”

CAN RESTORATION DOUBLE AS STORAGE? Some advocates say it’s time to think beyond cement and instead embrace natural watershed restoration as a storage solution.

In its 2016 Water Plan, the State of California declared that source watersheds would be considered “integral components of water infrastructure,” putting reviving watersheds on essentially the same level as building new dams or pipelines. While Colorado hasn't adopted similar language yet (Montana is the only other state to do so), there is increased attention to restoring watersheds as an ecological tool with water storage benefits.

“Our water has so much to do, we should give it a longer reach and take advantage of all the benefits,” says Abby Burk of the Audubon Society. “When water is in rivers instead of sitting in reservoirs, there are so many more benefits that support healthy, thriving ecosystems.”

Snowmelt and storm events, for instance, flash quickly through incised streams that are disconnected from their floodplains.

Healthier connected floodplain-riparian areas can restore plant life, recharge underground aquifers, preserve flows for aquatic species, and even reduce flood risk. Water in the ground also won't evaporate like it does from reservoirs. However, it's less clear if this restoration work can provide the kind of material storage benefits providers want to see.

“We’re careful about saying that restoration of floodplains and wetlands does not produce more water, but it can change the timing,” says Jackie Corday, a consultant Richard Stenzel

Cucharas Storage Collaborative stakeholders are looking to enlarge the existing Maria Stevens Reservoir.

C UC HA RAS | Storage Collaborative to Boost Economic Development

A

mid southern Colorado’s Spanish Peaks, a group of stakeholders known as the Cucharas Storage Collaborative completed a study in 2017 and found that the region had lost 70% of its prior storage capacity due to reservoir abandonment and maintenance issues that placed storage limits on existing dams.

That study and subsequent exploration examined numerous options for added storage. For now, two front runners are being designed—the enlargement of Maria Stevens Reservoir and a proposed new project, Bruce Canyon Reservoir.

Storage is badly needed, says Sandy White, a retired water attorney and Huerfano County Water Conservancy District board member. Municipal water providers in La Veta, Walsenburg, and the Cucharas Sanitation and Water District “hold on by their fingernails,” White says.

Plus, storage will help enable “plain old economic development,” he says.

Huerfano County, one of the poorest in the state, has trouble attracting new industry. “Water is one of the top five factors that new industries are interested in,” White says. Other factors he cites include a qualified workforce, housing and broadband availability.

Once design is complete, the collaborative may seek permits for the reservoirs, but cost could be a barrier. “We’re just starting to think about where we might get the money,” White says. The cost of storage is “an order of magnitude” more today than it was when the majority of Colorado’s water storage projects were built 60-plus years ago, when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation took the lead in building, financing and subsidizing a lot of big storage projects. “Storage comes with a real economic cost and may have a real economic benefit,” White says. “The difficult question is how do you justify the expenditure of large amounts of money on a storage project today?” We don’t know how beneficial a project will be until it’s complete, White says. No community, especially one without deep pockets, wants to be left paying back a project that doesn’t work financially. —CAITLIN COLEMAN

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

27

A series of beaver dams span much of the Middle Fork of the South Platte River in the Placer Valley, pooling water and spreading the river’s flows. Beaver systems like these store water and provide refuge for other species, even during low flow and drought conditions.

working with American Rivers on healthy headwaters issues. “The water can be attenuated [by absorption into the restored floodplain], the runoff is slowed when it's stored as groundwater, then it slowly gets released throughout the summer instead of all at once.”

Stretching natural runoff releases into the hot summer months could help farmers irrigate for longer growing seasons without storing water above ground, but little research has quantified that potential. Researchers are eyeing projects meant to mimic beaver structures to see how they change flows. A project that’s currently underway to restore floodplains and wetlands upstream of Grand County’s Shadow Mountain Reservoir could offer a good model; preliminary assessments from that project are expected by the end of the year.

According to Melinda Kassen, senior counsel for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, restoration fits into a more natural philosophy of water systems.

28 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

“ When we talk about water storage now, one of the first things we say is that we should be looking at green infrastructure instead of gray.”

—Melinda Kassen, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership

She hopes to see more municipalities begin to view natural infrastructure as just as valid as traditional infrastructure.

“You just have to remember that there is an alternative, and sometimes that's hard when you've done something one way for 150 years,” Kassen says. “When we talk about water storage now, one of the first things we say is that we should be looking at green infrastructure instead of gray.”

THINKING SYSTEM-WIDE A bigger way of thinking is taking hold in the South Platte River Basin, home to

approximately 70% of the state's population and its largest projected water supply gap.

The South Platte Basin Implementation Plan, completed in 2015 to inform the state water plan, showed that, with a population expected to reach 6 million by 2050, there could be a maximum annual water supply gap of 540,000 acre-feet.

The “status quo” strategy to fill that gap for cities is buy and dry, says Joe Frank, general manager of the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District in northeastern Colorado. Frank has always worked on behalf of the water users in his district, but as Courtesy EcoMetrics

water stresses increase, he is thinking more creatively about the future of agriculture by “providing water security for both” farms and cities.

There are more water rights on the South Platte River than there is water to fulfill them in most years, which is why buy and dry—where cities purchase senior agricultural water rights, drying up a farm and gaining the priority to divert that water when flows are low—has been attractive to municipalities. As an alternative, new storage might help. Some flows are available for capture, just not every year. The South Platte Storage Study, ordered by the Colorado Legislature in 2016 and completed in 2017, found that while flows were extremely variable between 1996 and 2015, a median flow of 293,000 acre-feet per year in excess of South Platte River interstate compact obligations crossed the state line into Nebraska.

The amount of water that could be put to use in Colorado is much less, the study found, but additional South Platte storage could help with a variety of things—from compact compliance to water sharing agreements to river flows and to better utilizing reusable return flows from upstream municipalities. It also found that a combination of storage pools working conjunctively up and down the river could be more beneficial than individual reservoirs.

To explore ways to move beyond individual reservoirs to close the gap, Frank and other water managers throughout the basin are collaborating on the South Platte Regional Opportunities Water Group, or SPROWG, and working toward a system-wide approach to storage and water use.

In a feasibility study published in March 2020, SPROWG members identified four alternative concepts that could help close the supply gap without diverting additional water from the Western Slope or buying up valuable water rights from local farmers.

The study analyzed the potential to store between 215,000 and 409,000 acre-feet of water in various generalized locations between Denver and the Nebraska state line. New storage would rely on available flows not obligated to existing water rights, water that can be reused, or temporary lease agreements with farmers. Stored water would then be used locally, transported through a pipeline for regional use, or exchanged between locations.

The idea, said SPROWG advisory comCourtesy Varra Companies

As sand and gravel are mined from riverside alluvium, the pits left behind can be converted into small water storage pools.

S OUT H PL AT T E | Reclaiming Gravel Pits as Reservoirs

G

arrett Varra manages Varra Companies, a 65-year-old sand and gravel business started by his grandparents. Since the 1980s, the company has also been developing water storage in Weld and Boulder counties— 3,500 acre-feet to date—reclaiming the pits in riverside alluvium after mining is complete and filling them with water which is used for their mining operation.

As development grows, and with it the need for sand and gravel, mining companies hollow out more holes that can be used for storage. “On the South Platte, mining companies are creating 10,000 acre-feet of [water storage] space every year if you combine the industry as a whole,” Varra says. Some operators— like LG Everist, which has built 12 water storage pools with a combined capacity of more than 15,400 acre-feet—sell or lease their storage to municipalities, industry and agriculture.

“We’ve been seeing a lot of interest in demand especially from the smaller municipalities who can’t afford to go out on their own and do a large dam project,” says Matt Noteboom, vice president of the Mountain Division for LG Everist. One advantage of gravel pit storage: The planning, permitting and construction is less intensive and more affordable than what’s required of larger projects.

“The ‘low hanging fruit [of water storage]’ has already been picked by a lot of larger municipalities,” says Drew Damiano, vice president of operations for United Water and Sanitation District, which formed in the early 2000s to provide renewable water to clients southeast of Denver. United has three small, off-channel reservoirs along the South Platte, one of which is a gravel pit. Those satellite reservoirs allow United to capture excess water, store it, and release it when needed to make up for depletions elsewhere. They’ve also purchased farms with recharge ponds where water slowly seeps into the ground and travels back to the river before being diverted, stored and released again.

“You have to come up with new and innovative ways of adjudicating water and moving that water and storing it. It’s not easy,” Damiano says.

While gravel pit storage provides opportunity and the efficiency of minimal permitting, it’s not perfect. Gravel pits are located close to the river where reservoir liners can limit interaction between the water table and the river, damaging river health. Impacts were also seen during the 2013 flooding in northeastern Colorado when the river changed course and gravel pits were breached, adding stored water to the floodwaters. —CAITLIN COLEMAN

H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

29

Opportunities for Increasing Storage As Colorado works to meet future water supply needs and attain the Colorado Water Plan goal of 400,000 acre-feet of additional storage by 2050, how is it doing so thoughtfully? While some projects are in the works, the Technical Update to the Colorado Water Plan, published in 2019, included a memorandum describing key opportunities for increasing surface water storage in existing facilities, constructing new reservoirs, and using groundwater aquifers for storage. Those opportunities include: 1 Reallocation of Some Flood Storage to Active Storage Many Colorado reservoirs have a flood pool that is kept empty to capture floodwaters when needed. At some reservoirs, hydrological assessments might determine that some flood storage could be reallocated to active storage.

2 Removal of Sediment In reservoirs that have been in operation for a long time or are downstream of wildfire areas, sediment removal could achieve additional operational storage volume.

3 Rehabilitation of Fill-Restricted Dams The Colorado Division of Water Resources (DWR) inspects dams

mittee member Lisa Darling, was to think regionally instead of by district, to move water where it’s needed at any given time.

“Maybe there was this sort of older water buffalo thinking in the past, but I think we know now that we can’t develop projects in a vacuum anymore,” says Darling, the executive director of the South Metro Water Supply Authority. (Darling also serves as president of Water Education Colorado's Board of Trustees.) “There’s a holistic system and that’s the prism we have to look through now.”

for signs of instability and sets a safe storage level at those dams.

Unsafe dams may be fill restricted, reducing the allowable storage level. Rehabilitation of some fill-restricted dams could remove those restrictions and achieve additional storage.

4 Dam Enlargements In certain places where water is available, raising the height of an existing dam could add storage in a reservoir.

5 New Dam Sites Colorado water right holders can file for conditional water rights and conditional storage rights for expected future water needs.

About 6.5 million acre-feet of conditional storage water rights that are greater than 5,000 acre-feet are on file with DWR, though some of those projects are not actively being pursued.

6 Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) Groundwater aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) can help meet future water needs. Unconfined/Shallow ASR projects may be best for near-term or seasonal surface water retiming because of connections to surface water systems. Confined/Deep ASR projects may be best for long-term storage.

Dan Luecke, who fought multiple large infrastructure projects across the state, says he’s been encouraged by an increase in innovation where cities and growers are thinking more collaboratively on both storage and use. In an era of constraints, he says, it will take all users—even those across state lines—working together to think about creative and efficient approaches to the storage dilemma.

“If we could get cities and irrigators to agree to some kind of combined manage-

ment scheme, we might need more storage but we could look at it in a more integrated and efficient context,” Luecke says. “It’s not about storage for this user or that area, it’s about an entire system that’s more flexible.” H Jason Plautz is a journalist based in Denver specializing in environmental policy. His writing has appeared in High Country News, Reveal, HuffPost, National Journal, and Undark, among other outlets.

INNOVATION IS OUR TRADITION • Leaders in Water Resource Planning since 1907 • Creative storage solutions with the Terry Ranch Aquifer Storage and Recovery Project • Technology upgrades to water treatment plants for improved automation and redundancy • Digital intelligence using advance metering infrastructure • Strategic expansion of a non-potable water system to reduce use of treated water supplies • Solutions to improve the ecology of the Cache la Poudre River with increased instream flows • Restore and protect our watersheds for safe and clean water

Through strategic planning and innovation, the City of Greeley’s Water and Sewer Department is continuing our proud tradition of excellence in safe, reliable water service.

Think Big | Greeley’s Water and Sewer Department GreeleyGov.com/services/ws WATER & SEWER

30 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

MEMBER’S CORNER A C O M M U N I T Y O F P E O P L E W H O C A R E A B O U T WAT E R

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Our members are regional leaders

T

his issue we’re spotlighting the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, one of WEco’s valued Aquifer-level members. “It’s very important that we continue to bring folks together to understand the big picture surrounding water issues in the Colorado River Basin,” says Public Information and External Affairs Manager Holly Kirkpatrick, speaking to the value of WEco’s programs.

Upper Yampa manages a combination of agricultural, municipal and industrial contracts within its boundaries, which extend from Routt County into parts of Moffat County in northwest Colorado. The District owns and operates two reservoirs and the Stillwater Ditch and strives to support agricultural, municipal, industrial, recreational and environmental users.

Additionally, Upper Yampa participates in the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable and the Yampa Integrated Water Management Plan.

As a past participant in WEco’s Water Fluency Program and Water Educator Network Symposium, Holly values the networking and resource sharing. “Your programs allow those

Andy Rossi, general manager of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, gives a tour to Colorado Mountain College students.

of us who work in water or are water educators to access some of the same tools so we aren’t continuing to reinvent the wheel when there are plenty of excellent resources that exist out there,” Holly explains. “Providing a network for water educators as we implement a Statewide Water Education Action Plan and update Basin Implementation Plans across each of the nine river basins in Colorado is invaluable right now.”

WEco is thrilled that our programs have continued to support our members and the wider community!

MISSION: IMPACT Water Education Colorado is the leading organization for informing and engaging Coloradans on water.

Through leadership training, educational resources, and programming, we are working toward a vibrant, sustainable and water-aware Colorado.

89%

Respondents to our annual supporter survey who found WEco's approach of factual, policy-neutral water education that presents diverse perspectives to be very or extremely valuable in 2020

ENGAGE

VOLUNTEER

GIVE

Dive in to our diverse programming.

Find more information on our website.

A few ideas to pique your interest:

We rely on our volunteers!

Email us at info@wateredco.org to express your interest:

Your gift advances an engaged Colorado, leading to informed decisions and sustainable solutions. Three ways to give:

you an educator or outreach 1 Are professional? Join our Water Educator

your expertise and we’ll plug you 1 Share in—as a blog contributor, a speaker, or

online to support our Fresh Water 1 Donate News initiative, Headwaters reporting,

2

a contact list to provide local 2 Join support when we bring one of our

Network for trainings, networking and collaborations.

Make your voice heard! Visit our blog and social media pages and share your thoughts or experiences by commenting.

up-close with water on an 3 Get upcoming WEco tour:

wateredco.org/programs-events/

a peer reviewer for publications.

programs to your area.

with the WEco Triple Bypass 3 Ride bike team Aug. 21 (or join racers for a

post-finish libation in Avon) — contact scott@wateredco.org

radio programming and more.

Visit: wateredco.org/get-involved/donate

an upcoming program 2 Sponsor or event—contact sami@wateredco.org now accepts charitable gifts of 3 WEco appreciated stock—you get double the tax benefit! Contact jennie@wateredco.org

Not a member yet? Join the WEco community at www.watereducationcolorado.org H E A DWAT E R S S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

•

31

1600 Downing St., Suite 200 Denver, CO 80218

NONPROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE PAID DENVER, CO PERMIT NO 178

WATEREDUCATIONCOLOR ADO.ORG Publication of Water Education Colorado's Headwaters magazine is made possible by the generous support of sponsors and advertisers.

We would like to extend our appreciation and thanks to these sponsors for contributing financially to this issue.

INNOVATIVE THINKING Prairie Waters

95% of Aurora’s water is fully reusable. Full utilization simply makes sense

London Mine Water Rights

A unique water source that is environmental friendly & fully reusable

Rocky Ford

Aurora’s continued farming program keeps agricultural vibrant and economically viable

Water Conservation

Aurora Water has award winning efforts that educate & incentivize customers through dynamic water-wise programs

WISE Partnership

Using water wisely through collaboration to meet water needs

Learn more about Aurora Water’s innovative thinking.

AuroraGov.org/WaterInnovation