From Tishana ‘Tish’ Cano at the Greeley Water & Sewer Department:
“Here is a land where life is written in water.” Thomas Hornsby Ferril, named Colorado’s poet laureate in 1979, could not have composed a better description of the agricultural community founded at the confluence of the Cache la Poudre and South Platte Rivers. In April 1870, a group of far-seeking settlers after a long four-day train ride from New York City and other points back East. Their goal was to create a new way of life on the dry and desolate plains of northern Colorado. Water was the key – and in 1874, a conflict with upstream irrigators of the agricultural community of Fort Collins created a flashpoint in Colorado water law and the American West. Both sides met “half-way” near present-day Windsor and launched an iconic, heated debate over western water rights. With guns used in the Civil War at the ready, the parley led to the birth of western water law – the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation.
Authors Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. and Michael Welsh describe the triumphs and challenges of Greeley’s water history, from its 1884 artesian well in City Park to its 1907 mountain water system. The book chronicles the Colorado-Big Thompson Project of the 1930s and the Milton Seaman Dam and Reservoir construction in the 1940s. Hobbs and Welsh describe the foresight and tenacity of creative men – David Boyd, Henry C. Watson, Delph Carpenter, W.D. Farr, Harold Evans, and others – who shouldered the work and pointed the way to identify, acquire, and deliver affordable water to Greeley for more than a century. “Plan for others as they have planned for you” guides and unites the actions of our story of Greeley Water.
From the Rocky Mountain American Water Works Association:
Public works agencies rarely have time to reflect on their accomplishments and lessons learned, as they pursue on a daily basis their operations, maintenance, and plans for future growth. Yet that retrospective is what the City of Greeley Water Utilities Department, with its century and one-half of service to the community, decided to engage with the research and publication of Confluence: The Story of Greeley Water (2020).
Harold Evans, chairman of the Greeley Water and Sewer Board for the past two decades, believed that those whom the utility served would benefit from a comprehensive analysis of the origins and development of an organization that began before Colorado statehood, and one that has grown over time by addressing the cycles of abundance and scarcity of water that define the Headwaters State.
Joining the team of researchers and writers in 2015 were Gregory J. Hobbs, Junior, a retired associate justice of the Colorado State Supreme Court, often considered the most knowledgeable member of the high court in matters of water law and policy, and Michael Welsh, a professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado, whose decades of teaching and scholarship included studies of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Southwest and on the West Coast.
This team explored the range of issues and tasks of a municipal water system that began in the summer of 1870 with a single irrigation ditch on the Cache la Poudre River that conveyed water to the fledgling Union Colony (later to become the town of Greeley). As the population increased and the economy evolved, the Greeley water utility added a community artesian well (1884); a mountain water treatment facility above Fort Collins at Bellvue (1907); and a storage facility on the North Fork of the
Poudre River known as Milton Seaman Reservoir (1945); the latter two remaining operational over a century later. Residents of the Colony, and their policies and regulations, also played an important role in the development of statewide and interstate water law. One example would be the enshrining in Colorado’s 1876 constitution of the “prior-appropriation doctrine.” In addition, a Greeley native, Delph Carpenter, who had been employed as a youth inspecting the community’s ditch system to guard against violation of its rules, became an authority on the collaborative features of western water law. Carpenter would be tasked by the U.S. Commerce Secretary, Herbert Clark Hoover, with a key role in the drafting of the Colorado River Compact.
That agreement would permit a group of Greeley and Colorado water professionals a decade later to approach the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to confront the severity of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl by means of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project; a multipurpose facility that secured the future for farmers and ranchers of the South Platte River basin, and later the urban growth of the Front Range.
The Greeley Water & Sewer Board, originating in 1958 from the idea that local decisions in water belong with the people, and guided by those who understood and appreciated what water meant to Greeley, established the nonpartisan principles that inform the acquisition and development of water facilities. From the leadership of water pioneer W.D. Farr to today, with Harold Evans, who has a background in Civil Engineering, the Board has possessed expertise and foresight that contributes to Greeley’s good fortune with its most precious resource.
What began with that first ditch has now become a network of multiple reservoirs in four river basins, and prize-winning water pollution-control facilities. The City of Greeley also has taken the lead in water efficiency & quality, working with state and federal partners to replace aging lead pipes, and to institute an advanced metering system and residential and commercial “water budgets” that keep utility customers informed of their use patterns and the value of conservation in times of drought.
Once the first volume on the story of Greeley water appeared, the water utility continued to provide domestic water and wastewater treatment to its network of communities. The City also pursued regional cooperation with the municipalities of Fort Collins, Loveland, Windsor, and Evans. Greeley maintained its partnership with the Northern Water district, in particular its Chimney Hollow Reservoir, which will store additional supplies for a dozen water organizations that own water rights in the CBT system that are not reliably accessible in times of need.From that recognition in 2020 that the story of Greeley water had not ended came a new edition in the summer of 2026, written to incorporate the purchase of water rights to the vast underground aquifer in far northern Colorado known as the Terry Ranch Project. Other dimensions of the utility’s operations addressed in the second edition of Confluence are the expansion of the “non-potable” water system for use in public and private spaces; the application of sophisticated information technology; and the advanced-planning functions of the “Integrated Water Resources Program,” which identifies scenarios and options for a wide variety of challenges and opportunities in water-resource management decades into the future.
It is our hope that this new look at an old story helps residents and businesses of Greeley and surrounding communities realize how important their water supplies are to their security and prosperity. In 1941, in the midst of a world at war, and as the decade of the Dust Bowl neared an end, Greeley’s leaders embraced a simple but compelling idea: “To plan for others as others have planned for you.” Wise words for their time, and wise words for ours now.
