AURORA | The Aurora City Council votes tonight on whether to lease “used” water to an oil and gas development company for drilling and hydraulic fracturing, a lease valued at millions of dollars.
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is asking the council on Monday to allow the company to use the water for its drilling and hydraulic fracturing programs to free underground petroleum products.
Anadarko spokesman John Christiansen says the company wants to use about 30,000 barrels of water a day for its operations in Wattenberg Field in northeastern Colorado. The company would only use water that has already been used by customers, treated at a wastewater plant and released into the South Platte River.
City officials report that the Anadarko would pay Aurora about four times the market value of the water, about $10 million.
Check tonight’s AuroraSentinel.com report after 8 p.m. for an update on the decision.
Nice story but many questions. Is this press release designed to hide the fact that there are other more insidious water deals under consideartion at tonights council meeting?
Why is Aurora selling 537 acre feet of water to Dominion? Dominion is the water supplyer for a Douglas Couny Development, Sterling Ranch, which has 12,000 residential dwellings on the drawing board.
Sterling Ranch has made a committment to Douglas County that not one single home will be built until a dependable, long term water supplyer is found, and they will help provide water to 700 homes in the area whose well are projected to dry up in the next decade. Looks like Aurora’s Prarier Waters project will be that supply.
The IGA for the WISE partnership, a water delivery group made up of Aurora, Denver and Southwest Metro, that will be able to supply 11 independent water providers with up to 60,000 acre feet of water per year. Denver will be able to use up to 15,000 acre feet of water for stratigic storage under the WISE water partnership. Amazing numbers, when you consider that according to Aurora’s water facts, the City of Aurora only captured 69,000 acre feet of raw water in 2009.
Dominion has one other deal for water with Aurora tonight. Apparenly Aurora bought some water rights from Littleton that are conditional; Dominion was receiving 237 acre feet of water from Littleton and now Aurora, with all the wisdom of the legal department, is recognizing that Dominion had appropreated this 237 acre feet of water before Auroara’s purchase and thus are legally entitled to have this water returned to them.
Makes one wonder if long term leases through the WISE partnership may put Aurora’s future citizens at risk; after all once before Aurora claimed to be able to teminate a long term water lease at will, the end result of that claim by Aurora’s legal department was a 90 year water lease with Roxbrough with an option for Roxbrough to renew for another 90 years.
Will all of these water leases turn out to be penny wise and pound follish or a Leprechaun’s pot of gold that will pay for the Prairie Waters Project?