NEWS

Thornton plans pipeline to tap into Poudre water

Kevin Duggan
kevinduggan@coloradoan.com

A decades-old plan to send Poudre River water to a northern metro Denver city is taking shape.

Thornton officials are developing plans to build a pipeline that would move water from north of Fort Collins to the city’s water treatment plant roughly 60 miles away.

A preferred route for the pipeline could be identified by early next year, said Mark Koleber, water project director for Thornton. Construction on the underground pipeline could begin in 2018.

The “big straw,” as some local water providers refer to the project, is expected to be operational by 2025. The amount of water it would transport over time would depend on Thornton’s population growth and demand for water.

Thornton water serves about 122,000 city residents plus another 16,000 in unincorporated Adams County, said Emily Hunt, the city’s water resources manager. The city’s population at “build out” is projected to be about 242,000.

The pipeline could deliver up to 14,000 acre feet of water per year to Thornton. An acre foot of water is enough to meet the annual needs of three to four urban households.

“That’s not how much we would be bringing down to the city on day one,” Koleber said. “That would be the total in the future.”

Thornton officials have finished an initial round of meetings with representatives of counties and cities that would be crossed by the pipeline to discuss its potential route and places to avoid.

The feedback will be used in developing alternative routes for the pipeline that will be presented to the cities and counties in the next round of meetings, Koleber said.

“Instead of drawing a line on the map and saying, ‘here is where it’s going,’ we want to work with them,” he said.

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City of Thornton Farm Properties

Water wars

Thornton came looking for Poudre River water in the mid-1980s after checking into the availability of resources to meet its future needs in the Clear Creek, Boulder Creek and South Platte River basins.

The city bought about 100 farms, primarily in Weld County, for their water. Thornton wound up with about 21,000 acres in Northern Colorado and the rights to 30,263 acre feet of water.

The purchases left Thornton owning 47 percent of shares in Water Supply and Storage Co., which has diverted from the Poudre River to serve farmers since 1891, and 17 percent of the Jackson Ditch Co. The move stunned Northern Colorado residents, governments and water providers.

“It was a big deal: It became apparent someone really could come up here and acquire water,” said John Stokes, director of Fort Collins Natural Areas. “There is still a lot of concern about that on the Poudre.”

The city’s application for water rights and converting the use of the land purchased from agricultural to municipal launched a long legal battle that wound up in the Colorado Supreme Court. The state Water Court issued its final decree in 1998.

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Still farming

Thornton’s Farm Management keeps track of the city’s properties and leases the land to farmers who keep them in production. Over the years, some of the land has been sold to school districts in Weld County.

The Water Court decree requires Thornton to revegetate the farmland from which it removes water with dryland grasses. The non-irrigated farms must be certified by the Natural Resources Conservation Service as being self-sustaining native grasslands.

So far, Thornton has converted about 7,000 acres of its property to grasslands. Of the 1,590 acres on eight farms owned by the city in Larimer County, 721 acres have been converted to dryland farming.

A couple of converted farms northwest of Fort Collins are used to graze cattle. A dryland farm west of the Anheuser-Busch brewery is used to grow hay that is regularly harvested and sold to local farmers.

Just east of Interstate 25, the city owns farms that are still irrigated by Poudre River water and wells to produce a variety of crops, including sugar beets and corn.

“For the near term at least, more farms won’t be converted until Thornton grows and needs that water,” Koleber said.

The city expects to eventually to sell all of its properties in Larimer and Weld counties.

New owners could develop the land as housing or for commercial or industrial uses, depending on local zoning, Koleber said. They also could continue farming by bringing water from other sources to the land.

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Making plans

Water Supply and Storage Co. draws water from the Poudre River using a large diversion structure and headgate near Bellvue. The water is carried east to farms and small storage reservoirs by the Larimer County Canal.

The irrigation company’s draw won’t be changed by the pipeline, which will likely start at a reservoir north of Fort Collins, Koleber said.

“There won’t be any additional water taken out of the Poudre than what is currently being delivered out of the Poudre to the farms under Water Supply and Storage system,” he said.

Thornton hired the engineering firm CH2M to help plan and design its water pipeline project, which is expected to take about seven years to build and cost roughly $400 million.

The city also is exploring ways to improve its existing systems for delivering and conserving water, as is required by the Water Court decree.

Communities that potentially would be crossed by the pipeline, such as Larimer and Weld counties, Fort Collins, Timnath, Windsor, and points south, have varied concerns about the impact of constructing the pipeline, Koleber said.

Thornton will likely have to acquire 300 to 500 permits for project as it crosses under private and public property, roads and highways, rivers, streams and ditches, and railroad tracks.

The pipeline probably would not cross land within Fort Collins city limits, Stokes said, although it might go across land it is Growth Management Area.

Fort Collins’ interest in the project includes maintaining open lands that serve as part of the “community separator” between Fort Collins and Wellington, he said. City officials plan to continue meeting with Thornton as its plan develop.

“Really we’re just letting our interests be known and Thornton will have to decide what to do with its assets,” Stokes said.

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Larimer County also is interested in knowing how Thornton plans to dispose of its land north of Fort Collins, said county planner Rob Helmick. Conservation easements on the properties would be a way to ensure they remain open.

Thornton will likely have to go through a county planning process in determining the route the pipeline would take. A potential route for taking the pipeline south would be along the Larimer County Road 1 corridor, Helmick said. The road is also Weld County Road 13.

The county would likely want the pipeline located where its construction would not overly impact the existing road and traffic flow, he said.

“That’s what we did when Xcel built its natural gas pipeline across the county,” Helmick said. “I don’t expect this would be any different.”

Kevin Duggan is a Coloradoan senior reporter covering local government. Follow him on Twitter, @coloradoan_dugg.

The basics

For the city of Thornton’s proposed water pipeline:

•55 to 65 miles: Length depending on alignment

•48 inches: Potential diameter

•14,000 acre feet: Maximum annual amount of water it could deliver to Thornton

•$400 million: Preliminary cost estimate

•2025: When the pipeline could go online

Source: City of Thornton