Wingfoot Water Resources, LLC

Photo: Tribune file photo
WRITTEN BY
Sara Knuth, Greeley Tribune

The Windsor Town Board voted unanimously Monday to approve the second water rate increase of the year for residents as officials look to strengthen their plans to add more water supplies.

The increase will bring rates up by an additional 6.21 percent, a hike that will appear on water bills April 1. In December, the board approved an annual increase of 3.29 percent that will be reflected on the March bill.

For water users, the increase means average single-family monthly consumption charges will be about $38.37. In 2018, bills were $35.06 per month on average.

During Monday’s meeting, town board said they didn’t come to the decision to raise the rates easily.

When one resident expressed concerned about how the rate increase might impact residents, Mayor Kristie Melendez said town officials came to the decision over several meetings.

“These conversations have not just been had in a couple of months,” she said. “We recognize and are very empathetic to our community any time we raise any type of rate. This was a long and hard-thought decision.”

But Melendez said the rate is something Windsor should have addressed more than a decade ago.

Other board members agreed.

Board member Ken Bennett said the decision means the board will be able to set the town up for more water security.

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Photo: Morgan Spiehs/The Coloradoan
WRITTEN BY
Nick Coltrain, Fort Collins Coloradoan

The Fort Collins City Council won’t be supporting the dual reservoir project that would take water from the Poudre River.

The council expressed ongoing concerns with how detrimental the Northern Integrated Supply Project may be to the river that runs through the city. Council could change its mind, pending an update to the project’s mitigation plan.

City staff noted that the river has been subjected to mankind’s whims for decades but took umbrage at the idea that the river is still in decline. The city characterized that as a key assumption made by Northern Water, which hopes to build the Glade and Galeton reservoirs as part of the massive water delivery project.

“We do not think the future of the river is a foregone conclusion,” city Watershed Planner Jennifer Shanahan said. “The (Final Environmental Impact Statement) broadly implies this notion of inevitable decline in the future of the river … We cannot simplify the future of the river in that way.”

The City Council voted unanimously to send its comments of nonsupport to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A final record of decision on the project is anticipated later this year. The city doesn’t have a formal role in the permitting process, but it is considered a key stakeholder because the river flows through city limits.

Worries expressed Tuesday centered around whether declined flows, and only three days of peak flow, would hurt the surrounding environment, flood plains and overall river health. A key request from the city would be that Northern Water have a plan in place for any unanticipated impacts the project has on the river.

“The bigger picture is we, Northern Colorado, have a choice on the direction we want to go,” council member Ross Cunniff said. “Forty years ago, I would have said it looked like the river was in decline. But Fort Collins made some choices … It’s really a remarkable story, and I appreciate the staff didn’t let that get lost.”

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PHOTO BY LUKE RUNYON / KUNC

WRITTEN BY
Luke Runyon / KUNC, https://www.kpbs.org

Low water levels on the Colorado River could force water shortages in Arizona, Nevada and Mexico in 2020, according to a new forecast from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

A shortage on the river is tied to the level of its main reservoir, Lake Mead near Las Vegas, Nevada. If the lake drops past an elevation of 1,075 feet, water users downstream have to start cutting back how much water they use. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects the lake to drop below that level next year, triggering water cutbacks in 2020.

Arizona would take the largest reduction in its share of the river’s water, with Nevada and Mexico also taking cutbacks.

The fate of Lake Mead is linked to Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border. Mead’s dropping level will trigger an increased release of water in 2019 from Powell to balance the two reservoirs.

The new figures ramp up pressure on water managers in the river’s Lower Basin — comprised of Arizona, California and Nevada — to finish negotiations and sign an agreement to take reductions to their water allocations earlier than is currently required.

Earlier in 2018 Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman warned water managers, farmers and city leaders throughout the southwest that the status quo was unacceptable and any delay in action on drought plans could cause the river’s biggest reservoirs to “crash.”

Lake Mead has flirted with the shortage declaration for years, but water managers have left enough water in the reservoir to avoid mandatory cutbacks.

Seven U.S. states and two Mexican states rely on the Colorado River for water supplies.
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Photo: Erin Hull/The Coloradoan

WRITTEN BY
Jacy Marmaduke, The Coloradoan

The mountain snowpack that feeds Northern Colorado’s water supply is ending the snow season on the same tune that has persisted for months: Worse than usual, but better than most of Colorado.

Snowpack in the Upper Colorado and South Platte river basins typically peaks in early to late April. As of April 3, those basins had 78 percent and 84 percent of the normal snow-water equivalent for this time of year, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The Laramie and North Platte River basins, which have some influence on Fort Collins water supply, top the state with 92 percent of normal.

“The South Platte and Upper Colorado basins are below average, but they are certainly in better shape than the southwestern and southern parts of the state,” where snowpack is barely half the normal amount, said Jeff Stahla, Northern Water public information coordinator.
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Photo: AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via Getty Images
WRITTEN BY
Matt Weiser, News Deeply, WATER DEEPLY

COLORADO IS EXPECTED to add 3 million residents by 2050, a 56 percent increase in a state already facing water supply challenges. To keep pace, the state is embarking on its biggest era of water development in generations.

At least seven major new reservoirs and water diversion projects are being planned in Colorado, which had a population of 5.6 million in 2017. Many would continue the controversial practice of diverting water across the Rocky Mountains from the state’s Western Slope, where the majority of Colorado’s precipitation falls, to its more arid Front Range, where people are flocking to Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Longmont and increasingly sprawling suburbs.

The water projects have been inspired partly by the Colorado Water Plan, an effort by Governor John Hickenlooper to solve a projected water deficit of 560,000 acre-feet by 2050, or enough to serve more than 1 million households. The plan calls for 400,000 acre-feet of new water storage and an equal amount of water conservation.

The plan is only two years old. But critics say it has prioritized gray infrastructure – new dams, pipelines and pumps – over green projects like water conservation and sustainable land use.

“Every single city is trying to further drain a river and refuses to do aggressive water conservation,” said Gary Wockner, director of Save the Colorado, an environmental group working to protect the Colorado River from further water extractions. “These cities and these water agencies think they have a water right, and they want to get that water no matter what. They want to secure all the water they possibly can.”

The water grab, as Wockner sees it, is a significant concern because climate change is already shrinking the Colorado River’s flow. One recent study found flows have already declined by an amount equal to Colorado’s projected water deficit, and will continue shrinking as the climate warms into the future. This year, the Colorado River watershed is experiencing one of its driest winters ever.

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