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This story was first published at the Vail Daily.
VAIL | It’s been more than six years since Aurora and Colorado Springs’ proposed Whitney Reservoir concept first surfaced with a raging controversy over test drilling for a dam on U.S. Forest Service land in the Homestake Creek Valley near Red Cliff in southeastern Eagle County.
Asked recently what the status of that locally unpopular proposal is, Aurora Water Deputy Director of Internal and External Affairs Shonnie Cline said by email, “As for Whitney, there has been no movement lately.”
Movement would mean landing on one of several proposed configurations for a dam on lower Homestake Creek and submitting all the applications needed for a federal permit to build what would be called Whitney Reservoir, which would flood land Aurora purchased in the valley and provide up to 20,000 acre-feet (roughly 6.5 billion gallons) a year for the two Front Range cities.
“Nothing has been landed on yet,” Cline said in terms of the size of a proposed dam, the amount of water the reservoir would contain and whether the road in the Homestake Valley would need to be realigned.
More than 700 different people and entities wrote letters of opposition seeking to block the test drilling, which was done in 2021 despite the threat of legal action from environmental groups.
Whitney would be the second reservoir in the Homestake Creek Valley, downstream from the existing 43,000-plus-acre-foot Homestake Reservoir, where water is piped through the continental divide to Turquoise Lake through a five-mile tunnel completed in 1967. That effectively moves the water out of the Colorado River Basin into the Arkansas River Basin.
Water activist and former research scientist Gary Wockner of Save the Colorado thinks several proposed dam projects are on hold because of a lawsuit his group filed and won challenging Denver Water’s Gross Reservoir expansion on South Boulder Creek. That case has been appealed and oral arguments start Friday in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wockner said.
“I am aware that a lot of water agencies are watching this court case closely,” Wockner said during a recent phone interview. “Whitney Reservoir has not triggered permitting yet. There’s a lot of folks that are watching to see how the Gross Dam situation, how the court case resolves it, so it’s possible that Whitney Reservoir is just sitting there.”
Cline said that was not the reason the Whitney proposal has not moved forward.
Wockner also speculated Aurora may be considering an alternative to Whitney Reservoir.
“Aurora is developing the so-called Wild Horse reservoir in South Park,” Wockner said. “And instead of trying to develop the Whitney Reservoir, they’re going to run it through their system and store it there in South Park in Wild Horse because they don’t have the whole wetlands, fen issue. It’s the same water right … and South Park in general is more friendly (to a reservoir).”
The Homestake Creek dam site for Whitney is home to ancient fens and wetlands that would be inundated by the new reservoir.
Asked if there was any truth to Wockner’s Whitney alternative theory at Wild Horse, Aurora’s Cline replied “no.”
It is understandable Front Range water utilities are not eager to discuss what are known as transmountain diversions to move water out of the Colorado River drainage into the Pacific Ocean and into river systems such as the Arkansas drainage that flow into the Gulf of Mexico.
Record low snowpack and record high temperatures this summer have contributed to dramatically diminished mountain reservoirs and put a white-hot spotlight on water usage in Front Range cities such as Denver and Aurora.
With the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation set to offer a draft short-term operating plan this month after the seven Colorado River states failed to come to an agreement — a plan many expect to be challenged in court — the future of the endangered source of water for 40 million people in the American Southwest has never been more uncertain. Front Range water users divert an estimated 500 million acre-feet a year out of the Colorado River Basin.
“We’ve been fighting this battle as long as I’ve been here was 48 years, and I imagine it’ll continue, and Whitney will be the next battle front,” said Dick Cleveland of Vail, the chair of the Eagle River Water & Sanitation District board.
Acknowledging the drought that prompted a Stage III water restrictions for ERWSD, Cleveland said the timing of any discussion about Whitney Reservoir is bad: “They don’t want to talk about that now. But you know Aurora’s customers have cut back like 20%.”
Still, that’s short of what the local utility has done, with its customers reducing outdoor irrigation 41% and overall water use 24% compared to the average over the last three years.
“We don’t have reservoirs that store water. We have what we get in snow,” Cleveland said. “We’re shocked at how responsive the community has been. That 24% reduction is incredible … certainly we’re smaller (than Aurora and Denver), so it’s a lot easier to communicate to everybody.
“But few, if any people in the Front Range think about where their water comes from or even know that half of it comes from the Western Slope. They just don’t know,” Cleveland said. “And like all of us, you get used to, you flush the toilet and it goes where you want and you turn the water on and you have clean, fresh water.”
Glenn Porzak, a renowned Boulder water attorney who has won several big cases keeping water on the Western Slope, said Eagle County’s state-mandated ability to permit major outside infrastructure projects that have local impacts — its so-called 1041 permit power — looms large.
“(Whitney) would need a 1041 permit, and good luck on getting that Eagle County 1041 permit,” Porzak said, adding there has been talk of changing that authority legislatively in Denver. “That never materialized. That would be obviously very controversial, and I just certainly don’t see that anytime in the future. But that was always the threat, that if you don’t give us a 1041 permit, we’re going to go to the legislature and get a major change of that legislation.”
This story was made available via the Colorado News Collaborative. Learn more at https://www.google.com/url?q=https://colabnews.co&source=gmail-imap&ust=1785872343000000&usg=AOvVaw0nBt4P_OQIVVe5hfXcKG22