Summit County Citizens Voice

The West Slope and Front Range once again tangled over water during a public forum in Frisco Tuesday evening. PHOTO BY BOB BERWYN.

Local officials say a draft study on new diversions is incomplete; Denver Water managers say they will require even more from Dillon Reservoir without the project

By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY — Local officials said Tuesday that a draft environmental study for a major Denver Water project is incomplete and doesn’t accurately reflect potential impacts in Summit County.

At issue is Denver Water’s plan to expand its Moffat Collection system in Grand County. The proposal is in a comment phase, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers taking input on the draft study  through March 17.

In addition to increasing diversions from the Fraser River, in Grand County, Denver Water would also take between 4,000 and 5,000 acre feet of additional water from Dillon Reservoir each year, equal to about 2 percent of the Blue’s annual flow at its confluence with the Colorado River near Kremmling.

Denver Water project manager Travis Bray said that, without the project, Denver Water would have to take even more water from Dillon Reservoir in the future as demand for water grows on the Front Range.

Currently, Denver Water’s collection system is unbalanced, with 90 percent going through the southern branches of the system (including Dillon Reservoir, the Roberts Tunnel and the South Platte), and only 10 percent in the northern collection system (including the Moffat Tunnel).

The Blue River Watershed Group hosted a public forum on the project Tuesday evening that turned into a classic trans-divide showdown. County and town officials advocated for more Front Range conservation, while Denver Water staffers gave a detailed explanation of their plan to export more West Slope water across the Continental Divide, and also outlined their conservation efforts.

Bray said increased diversions from the Blue River Basin would mainly happen in wet years during peak spring flows, shaving some water off the top of the hydrograph when it’s least noticeable.

“In dry years, we take smidge,” he said. “It puts water in storage to use during a drought.”

Flaws
Summit County Commissioner Karn Stiegelmeier said the draft study has some serious flaws.

“The stated purpose is artificially narrow. It assumes that a new reservoir needs to be built,” Stiegelmeier said. Instead, Denver Water should be looking at alternate ways to meet the stated need for 18,000 acre feet of new water, including more re-use and aggressive conservation measures.

Stiegelmeier said that there are other options that could provide Denver Water with up to 78,000 acre feet of new supplies — more than four times the amount the utility says it will get from the Moffat Tunnel project.

Stiegelmeier also said the environmental study completely ignored the cumulative impacts from existing historic diversions and focused only on the incremental effects of the latest Denver Water plan. Summit County also wants more details on seasonal impacts.

“What happens in May to September is the main concern. That’s our primary recreation season,” she said, adding that the draft study failed to address potential climate change impacts and also didn’t take into account any of the possible outcomes of a wild and scenic river planning process currently under way.

“Fluctuating lake levels are going to have an impact on our marina,” said Dillon public works director Eric Holgerson, adding that the town recently completed a marina master plan that estimates the cost of addressing changing Dillon Reservoir operations at about $5 million.

Holgerson also said the draft study doesn’t address the crucial issue of dust blowing up from the exposed bed of the reservoir when water levels are low. The dust not only affects local residents and tourists, but also has impacts on air quality in nearby wilderness areas, he said.

Campy Campton, who runs commercial raft trips on the Lower Blue, pointed out that the river is the only commercially viable stretch of whitewater in the county.

“It has become a huge asset to our business, and it’s getting more important as vacations get shorter,” Campton said, calling for more disclosure of day to day impacts on Blue River flows.

Similar concerns were repeated by Erica Stock, an outreach coordinator with Colorado Trout Unlimited.

The fisheries conservation group has specific ecological concerns related to lower flows, including warmer water that harms fish and higher concentrations of toxic metals. All those issues need to be addressed in the environmental study, she said.

“We need minimum flows, flushing flows, adaptive management and monitoring. If we see the river is starting to collapse, we need to stop doing what we’re doing,” she concluded.

Check out the TU action page on the project for more information on how to comment before the March 17 deadline.

Filed under: Environment, rivers, Summit County Colorado Tagged: | Blue River, Denver Water, Moffat Tunnel collection system, Summit County Colorado, Summit County News, West Slope