Alex Hager takes a look at Chimney Hollow Reservoir in this article on the KUNC website.Click through to read the whole article, here’s an excerpt:
Right now, Chimney Hollow is a project site teeming with activity. Building a reservoir involves far more than just digging a hole in the ground. At this particular spot, it requires the construction of a massive dam – the tallest built in the United States in 25 years…To build something at this scale, machines are moving a volume of earth that’s hard to wrap your head around.
“We’re filling 100-ton trucks,” said Joe Donnelly, Chimney Hollow’s project manager. “We need a whole load of rock placed on the dam every two minutes, five days a week, for two and a half years.”
[…]
[Jeff] Stahla said additional water storage will help water providers gain some certainty and more smoothly supply homes across the fluctuation of wet years and dry years — a practice baked into water projects for centuries…
“If we’re going to be able to exist and offer the same opportunities to our children and grandchildren on the Front Range,” said Jeff Stahla with Northern Water, “We should consider — and we’re doing it here — capturing the water when it’s available so that we have flexibility in those years when we don’t have it.”