From The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Dennis Webb):
The state of Colorado has signed an agreement to boost Front Range water storage, one of the things a growing chorus of Western Slope voices has been calling for to ease the demand for more transmountain diversions. Gov. John Hickenlooper on Friday announced the agreement between the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide for greater water storage at Chatfield Reservoir in Chatfield State Park. The action will result in an increase of up to 75 percent in storage for uses other than flood control.
It comes after Club 20’s board last month weighed in on an ongoing state water planning process by calling for measures including prioritizing “the storage of Front Range water on the Front Range.” That’s a position that also was endorsed earlier as part of a position paper on the state water plan that was signed by numerous headwaters counties, towns, water utilities and other entities. That paper specifically mentioned Chatfield as an example of such a project that could be undertaken.
The storage project announcement comes amid increasing Western Slope concern that the new state water plan will result in yet more transmountain diversion projects being pursued. In August, Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado sent Hickenlooper and Colorado Water Conservation Board director James Eklund a letter urging them to oppose any more diversions of water across the Continental Divide.
“The Western Slope in Colorado has no more water to give,” said the letter, signed by AGNC Chair Mike Samson, a Garfield County commissioner, and Vice Chair Jeff Eskelson, a Rio Blanco County commissioner.
It also was signed by former Western Slope state lawmakers Ron Teck and Jack Taylor, several local office holders in the region including Mesa County Commissioner John Justman, and ranching, energy and other business interests.
The AGNC refers to a letter from several Front Range water interests this spring calling for assurance that a new water project involving Colorado River water will be part of the state plan for meeting future needs.
“This would be too much of the same old story,” says the AGNC letter, which argues that for too long the thirst of the Front Range has been quenched “at the sacrifice of Western Slope communities.” It notes that western Colorado already provides more than 400,000 acre-feet of water a year to the Front Range.
Club 20 didn’t specifically oppose more diversions, but said the state plan should contain provisions including prioritizing municipal conservation, “including a statewide conservation goal and measurable outcome, and a higher goal for water providers that are using water supplies of statewide concern such as permanent dry-up of agricultural land and/or need a new transmountain diversion from the Colorado River basin.”
The idea of more Front Range storage of water originating there has received additional attention after last September’s Front Range flooding caused some to lament about water running downstream that might have been stored instead.
The Chatfield project has been in the planning and permitting stages for more than a decade, Hickenlooper’s office said in a news release.
“The Chatfield Reservoir Storage Reallocation Project will help farmers irrigate crops and assist communities working to replace limited groundwater with sustainable surface supplies. The project also has the benefit of storing more Front Range water and easing demand for water from the Western Slope. Importantly, as well, the project increases the capacity of an existing reservoir, reducing the impacts to the environment that could be associated with an entirely new reservoir site,” the news release said.
The state water plan principles endorsed by the headwaters jurisdictions don’t include outright opposition to more transmountain diversions, but lay out numerous conditions for more diversions occurring, including that existing diversion water first be “re-used to extinction to the extent allowed by law.”
More Chatfield Reservoir coverage here.