Utilities cross the Divide to start negotiating water-moving plans

Kyle Heitmeyer and Beau Woodward use a new vacuum technology to remove sediment from a Fraser River tributary. Grand County officials are looking for ways to soften the impact of more diverted water. (Joe Amon | The Denver Post)

On Labor Day in 2006, Wes Palmer, foreman at Skylark Ranch outside of Kremmling, single-handedly dried up the Colorado River.

Palmer opened the head gate to the ranch's irrigation ditch and cut the already low flow by about 40 percent. When he was done collecting some of the fall allotment for the Skylark, there was barely enough water to wet the rocks in the riverbed.

"It was a holiday weekend and the fishing lodges were full, and I dried up the Colorado," Palmer said, shaking his head.

The episode underscores the delicate balance in the upper Colorado and Fraser rivers, which supply both Grand County and Front Range cities and suburbs.

It is a balance Grand County officials and managers for Denver Water and the Northern

Colorado Water Conservancy District are trying better to strike.

The two sides of the Continental Divide are engaged in a first-of-its-kind negotiation over moving more water to the Front Range — the two water companies are planning $410 million in new projects to provide an extra 16 billion gallons — while protecting the mountain streams and rivers.

"It is a change of mind-set on both the east and west slopes," said Grand County Commissioner James Newberry.

For Denver Water it is the first time the utility has "been willing to sit down and discuss this," said Dave Little, manager of water-resource planning.

"The question is how to do what we need to do with a lighter footprint," Little said.

Denver needs the water to meet projections showing the city's thirst will exceed its supply in eight years — with demand growing 50 percent to 375,000 acre-feet.

And without new water, growing northern suburbs such as Broomfield will be unable to turn large, open tracts into homes.

For Grand County — where fishing, kayaking, skiing and tourism generated almost $170 million in revenue in 2003 — maintaining the health and flow of streams is an economic concern as well as environmental one.

As it is, about 60 percent of the county's waters measured at the confluence of the Colorado and Fraser were shipped to the Front Range between 1991 and 2001, according to a Northwest Colorado Council of Governments analysis.

The new projects would remove another 10 percent.

"We are at a tipping point," Newberry said. "We can't have any more diversions without some mitigation."

Newberry knows how bad it can get because on that Labor Day in '06, he went onto Skylark Ranch to take a look at the Colorado.

"The river was as low as I'd ever seen it," he said.

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