From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):
A lease agreement to provide 2,000 acre-feet of water annually for $500 an acre-foot (325,851 gallons) to the Pikes Peak Regional Water Authority was announced Wednesday at the monthly meeting of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District by John Schweizer, a Rocky Ford farmer who is president of the Super Ditch…
“We do not have a signed lease, but we are making excellent progress,” said Gary Barber, agent for the Pikes Peak group. He said chances of a contract are good, if all of the boards of the El Paso County water districts approve the deal. The details of which farmers will participate in the deal, how dried-up land will be accounted for, how water will be moved to the communities that are purchasing it and other technical matters have yet to be worked out…
The Lower Ark board, which supported the formation voted unanimously Wednesday to allow water attorney Peter Nichols to file a change of use case for the Super Ditch. Until that change is approved in Division 2 Water Court, the lease would be administered under a Substitute Water Supply Plan by the Division of Water Resources, Nichols said. Division Engineer Steve Witte said the plan would be similar to one used to regulate the lease deal between the High Line Canal and Aurora in 2004-05…
The timing and location of flows to augment the Arkansas River will depend on where water is taken from under the Super Ditch lease, Witte said. Nichols said the amount of water leased to the Pikes Peak group could increase to up to 8,000 acre-feet annually over the next 20 years. “The numbers will increase as we prove the ability to move the water,” said Jay Winner, executive director of the Lower Ark district.
One big problem will be moving the water to El Paso County. That has not stopped El Paso County from pursuing water rights along the Arkansas River, however. Fountain and Widefield have purchased a ranch in Custer County for its water rights, while Donala bought a Lake County ranch water rights. “We will see a working model of how the water will be moved in January,” Barber said. Most of the Pikes Peak group is located in Northern El Paso County, outside of Colorado Springs, which controls most of the pipelines leading from the Arkansas River. Colorado Springs has discussed using Southern Delivery System capacity to assist the other communities, but no decisions have been made and SDS is at least seven years from completion. One Pikes Peak participant, Fountain, has a share of the Fountain Valley Conduit from Lake Pueblo, however and could use the excess capacity to bring water into the community. Fountain also has the most urgent need because of its rapid growth in recent years.
More coverage from Dave Vickers writing for the La Junta Tribune-Democrat. From the article:
The deal calls for PPWA to pay $500 per share to lease the water from shareholders of the Bessemer Ditch, Highline Canal Co., Oxford Ditch, Catlin Canal, Otero Ditch, Holbrook Canal and Fort Lyon Canal.
The seven entities in the PPRWA that want access to the farmers’ water include Academy Water and Sanitation District, Cherokee Metropolitan District, Donala Water and Sanitation District, Triview Metropolitan District, The Town of Monument, the Town of Palmer Lake and Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District. All are in northern El Paso County. Some, including Cherokee Metropolitan District, have been battling to preserve their rights and struggling to obtain more water because the aquifers that currently supply their members are drying up…
As members of the Super Ditch, shareholders from the seven canals are not contractually tied to any deal. The Super Ditch, incorporated last year as a private company, was developed by farmers who have searched for ways through the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District to market their water in a way that would avoid what happened in Crowley County. Colorado Springs and Aurora purchased water rights to the Colorado Canal and Rocky Ford Ditch in the 1980s and 1990s, then exchanged those rights upstream so they could transport the water to their cities. In the process about 70,000 acres of former farm land was dried up. Schweizer said that perhaps as much as 25 percent to 30 percent of the land under the seven ditches would be without water eventually, but only during years when the seven El Paso County entities need water to overcome shortages there. “It would probably be done with rotational fallowing,” Schweizer said. “Some years none of the land would be dried, some years, like 2002 and 2003 (when severe drought fell upon Colorado), more land could be fallowed.” Although the leasing and fallowing program is scheduled to start in 2011, Schweizer said most Super Ditch members believe it will take at least that long to “work the kinks out and get the program approved in water court.”
Colorado Springs Utilities has been working on a second pipeline, called the Southern Delivery System, which recently was approved by both federal officials and officials from Pueblo County, El Paso County and the cities of Pueblo and Colorado Springs. The SDS project is intended to meet the drinking water needs of the Colorado Springs metropolitan area past the year 2040. Officials from CSU have said in the past they are open to use of SDS by other entities, including Super Ditch, that could use excess delivery capacity SDS might provide. “Some of the little communities have engineered their own plans for a pipeline from Pueblo Reservoir, but the cost of it was out of their reach,” Schweizer said. “They believe it would be better to go with SDS, at least at first. I know they would like to have a permanent place for getting water from that pipeline when it’s built. “A whole lot will depend on SDS and whether Colorado Springs allows it to be used to transport water for other water users,” he said.
More Super Ditch coverage here and here.
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