From The Greeley Tribune (Tyler Silvy):
Peterson is just happy the town is getting help, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the Colorado Department of Local Affairs and the South Platte Basin Roundtable Groundwater Technical Committee. Some members of those organizations have come out against allowing more well pumping around Gilcrest, so it puts the town in a tricky spot.
Money from those groups has covered emergency dewatering east of U.S. 85, a dewatering study and the drilling of a dewatering well at the sewage treatment plant.
Dewatering involves pumping water out of the ground and getting it directly to the river. Workers began drilling the well at the sewage treatment plant Friday.
The plan now is to pump water out of the ground and stick it in an old, 6-inch pipeline that will take the water to the South Platte. The pipeline is probably too small, state officials agree, because it’s also used to drain stormwater and sewage effluent. So the state may provide even more money to replace the pipeline.
But the town needs more money if it’s going to address flooding in residents’ basements. A study by JVA, a civil engineering consulting firm, was released this past fall, and it showed a couple options involving adding more dewatering wells — one for $7 million and one for $11 million. Add in hundreds of thousands of dollars in operating costs for the wells each year, and Peterson said she has no idea how the town will pay for that. Gilcrest is able to salt away only $75,000-$80,000 toward capital expenditures each year.