From the City of Aspen via The Aspen Daily News:
The city of Aspen is hosting a public open house on the municipality’s conditional water rights on Castle and Maroon creeks on Thursday from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Pitkin County library community meeting room.
City representatives will provide background information and host a dialogue with the public with the goal of asking for input and ideas.
Since 1965, the city has maintained conditional water rights for a reservoir on Castle and on Maroon creeks to plan for the community’s future water needs, a press release says. To keep these rights, Aspen must submit a diligence filing this October.
Aspen Journalism reported in June that, if built as currently described by the city’s plans, which were first presented to a water court judge in 1965, the Maroon Creek reservoir would store 4,567 acre-feet of water behind a 155-foot-tall dam just below the confluence of East Maroon and West Maroon creeks.
But the release issued Monday by the city says the diligence filing is a routine one that occurs every six years.
And it is not a proposal to actually build the reservoir, the city says.
“A conditional water right is a place holder in Colorado’s priority system for water rights,” the release says.