From the Denver Business Journal (Cathy Proctor):
The project (website here) boosts Aurora’s water supply by 20 percent — about 3.3 billion gallons of water a year. It came in ahead of schedule and $101 million under the original $754 million budget, said Greg Baker, spokesman for the Aurora Water Department. “We’re ahead of schedule and well under budget,” Baker said. “How often does a city get to say that?”
Water equivalent to what Aurora gets from the Western Slope, uses and sends into the South Platte River is pumped out of the river near Brighton, then filtered through a series of gravel and sand beds into a pipeline. The 34-mile pipeline sends the water to a new treatment plant. From there it goes on to city residents and businesses — who use it before its returned to the river. It’s a continuous loop of use and re-use. “It’s one of the most sustainable new water supplies in the Southwest,” said Scott Ingvoldstad, a spokesman for CH2M Hill. “It combines natural purification with a state-of-the-art new treatment facility that uses the latest technology to ensure that Aurora will have a sustainable and high-quality water supply for many decades. “It uses water rights that Aurora already owns and recaptures them in the South Platte River so that they didn’t have to build a new dam on the Western Slope. It’s making the most efficient use of the water rights that they already own,” Ingvoldstad said.