Brief by Central Staff
Water – April 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
When we started this magazine nine years ago, one reason was to define a region: Central Colorado. On that account, we feel a minor sense of accomplishment (warranted or not) when we see the sign for Central Colorado Regional Airport or a Central Colorado Widget Co.
But we’re not celebrating the proposed Central Colorado Project, which is a new name for a water project that has been annoying our Gunnison neighbors for years — a reservoir at Union Park (in Taylor Park east of Tincup Reservoir) that would divert Western Slope water to the Front Range.
It has been promoted for years by the Natural Energy Resources Co., a Palmer Lake firm run by a fellow named Dave Miller. For the past decade and more, he has promoted several variations of the project — some with support from Front Range cities like Aurora, and others pretty much on his own.
Miller’s argument starts with the observation that Colorado is not using its full share of Colorado River water, and that about 700,000 acre feet that belongs to Colorado, but is not put to “beneficial use,” flows out of the state in an average year. There is also the fact that no significant amount of water from the Gunnison is diverted to the Front Range.
Miller proposes a 900,000-acre-foot “high-altitude off-stream” reservoir at Union Park, and points out that evaporation loss would be minimal at that altitude, and the stored water could be delivered to four major basins (Gunnison, Arkansas, South Platte, and Rio Grande).
Acting through his company, Miller filed in water court for the Union Park Project in 1986. In 1988, he conveyed his interest to Arapahoe County (Front Range, just south of Denver), and the county wanted to divert 300,000 acre-feet a year from the Gunnison basin, across the upper Arkansas valley, over the Mosquito Range to Antero Reservoir in South Park, where it could flow down the Platte to Arapahoe County.
Late in 1988, Water Judge Robert Brown dismissed most of the application, but Arapahoe County immediately re-applied. After a trip to the Colorado Supreme Court and back, the second application was denied. In essence, the judge found that once all the other water claims have been considered (like hydro-electric generation), there is only about 16,000 acre-feet available for export from the basin.
That wasn’t enough water to justify the extensive plumbing and pumping that would be required for delivery to the Front Range, so Arapahoe County gave up on it. Miller is still at it; he’s currently lobbying the Colorado Springs Water Department on behalf of the Central Colorado Project, which is Union Park with a new name.
He keeps insisting that the Gunnison has 300,000 acre-feet a year available for export. But a 74-page report recently released by the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies says that the actual figure is much lower, and that Front Range water needs could be met more economically by other means, like conservation and re-use.
That report is available on-line at http://lawfund.org/media/pdf/GunnisonReportFinal.pdf