Greeley to outline NISP concerns in letter to Corps

GREELEY — The city of Greeley is asking for ways to mitigate some costly improvements it would have to make to its water-treatment infrastructure if a controversial water project is built.

Thursday is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ deadline for comments on a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement it issued in June about the proposed Northern Integrated Supply Project, a collaborative effort to meet the water demands of a growing Northern Front Range. Greeley is not one of the 15 municipalities and water districts that are stakeholders in the project, so the SDEIS didn’t address impacts on the Weld County seat — but its water managers say they still have some serious concerns the Corps and the agency spearheading the project need to hear about.

The city’s Water and Sewer department presented its report to the Greeley City Council on Tuesday night and was to issue a letter about its concerns today to the Corps and to the Berthoud-based Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which would manage NISP for its stakeholders if the Corps grants a permit.

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A consulting team made up of engineers, consultants and lawyers reviewed the SDEIS, “and we have some issues with it,” said Eric Reckentine, the city’s deputy director of water resources — issues he said could cost the city $10 million or more to address.

NISP would divert water from the Cache la Poudre River into two new reservoirs — Glade, northwest of Fort Collins, and Galeton, northeast of Greeley — which would capture water during wet years that otherwise would flow east into the South Platte River and then out of the state. But Reckentine said the reduced volume of water that diversion would leave in the Poudre presents problems for Greeley — at its wastewater treatment plant, but also especially its Bellvue water-treatment plant along the Poudre just downstream from the Glade diversion point.

“As flows diminish, the amount of nutrients we need to treat increases,” he said, because with less flushing action of rapidly moving water, the river would contain more sediment — extra material that would have to be removed in the treatment process.

“We found the Corps’ water-quality analysis to be insufficient and not in compliance with NEPA,” Reckentine said, referring to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. The Clean Water Act and NEPA require that applicants take appropriate and reasonable measures to avoid and minimize adverse impacts — and provide compensation for any that can’t be avoided or minimized.

“We’re not opposed to the project, but we want it mitigated,” he said. “Northern would be responsible to pay the impacts because they would receive the benefit of the project.”

The report to the city council also echoed concerns about degraded recreational quality on the river, which also was one of the issues brought up in the staff report to the Fort Collins City Council, which unanimously passed a resolution opposing NISP on Tuesday night.

The letter Greeley was drafting to the Corps was to acknowledge the need for the extra water storage to meet the region’s projected growth, but suggested some additions to the plan, such as agreeing up front that Greeley wouldn’t have to pay for any of NISP’s damage to the area.

The NISP plan allocates $5 million for mitigation plans – $1 million of which is earmarked for improvements needed in Fort Collins – but nothing is specifically earmarked for Greeley.

Save the Poudre, the citizens’ group that has been most vocal in opposing NISP, also sent more than 100 pages of comments to the Corps ahead of the 5 p.m. deadline. The group’s director, Gary Wockner, said the report was prepared by a group of 34 experts in biology, ecology, economics, environmental law, hydrology, geomorphology and water chemistry, most with graduate degrees or graduate training in their fields.

“We find the SDEIS for NISP to be fatally flawed and scientifically incompetent,” Wockner said. “The Corps must redo the SDEIS because it violates the National Environmental Policy Act and Clean Water Act.”

Among Save the Poudre’s issues with NISP, it told the Corps, is that it would increase the threat of flooding in Fort Collins and Greeley.

“The more water you take out, the slower the water flows, the less flushing there is, and the more it turns into a muddy ditch with weeds and sedimentation,” Wockner said. “When flooding does come, the flooding is much worse because the channel is smaller.”

His group’s report also contended that “dozens of operating or planned oil and gas wells are under the footprint of the proposed Galeton Reservoir; NISP would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than advertised because it will have to move or redrill the wells.”

Wockner urged NISP stakeholders to “withdraw their permit application for this river-destroying project and focus on alternatives that are faster, cheaper and easier to achieve.”

If approved, NISP’s two reservoirs could store a total of more than 215,000 acre-feet of water, 40,000 of which would be allocated to municipal water supplies annually. Glade Reservoir, which would be larger than Horsetooth Reservoir west of Fort Collins, would be built north of the intersection of U.S. Highway 287 and Colorado Highway 14 northwest of Fort Collins and would hold up to 170,000 acre-feet of water diverted from the Poudre River. Galeton Reservoir would be built east of Ault and Eaton in Weld County and hold up to 45,000 acre-feet of South Platte River water.

About a dozen cities and towns and four water districts have signed up to buy water from the project if it wins final approval from the Corps.

Northern Water has pledged to working with the cities of Fort Collins and Greeley to address their concerns, and that water-quality evaluations and detailed water temperature and water quality analyses would be completed prior to the release of the final environmental impact statement.

The project has received more than 100 endorsements from around the state, including industry and economic-development groups, newspapers and the Larimer County commissioners.