Water cluster to unleash flood of ideas

FORT COLLINS – Roughly 70 years ago, local  innovators built one of the most ambitious water-development projects in the world.

The Colorado-Big Thompson Project plumbed and piped flows from the Colorado River through the Continental Divide to meet the growing demands of the northern Front Range. The massive transmountain water diversion slaked the needs of the region’s agricultural sector and helped reinvent how the West used its water.

Now, members of the newly formed Colorado Water Innovation Cluster are planning to build on that legacy to conceive and implement 21st-century water solutions.

After first convening this past January, CWIC made its public debut in October at the monthly Rocky Mountain Innovation Initiative after-hours meeting. Bringing together staff from local engineering, environmental and manufacturing firms with officials from Colorado State University and local government, the water cluster is rolling out a lineup of objectives and projects, following the lead of other industry clusters to promote the region’s competitive advantages on water services and technology.

“These (clusters) are pretty effective at doing job creation and growing our community from within,´ said Josh Birks, Fort Collins economic advisor and co-chair of CWIC. “We realized there was a rich heritage in the water industry here and some great assets at CSU, and we discovered there’s a lot of activity going on and a lot of employment in the industry. Many of the companies really didn’t know what the other companies were doing and when we got them all in a room they got excited really quickly.”

According to the cluster, there are 36 “water innovation” businesses in the Fort Collins area employing more than 1,425 people. The sector has achieved 11-percent growth in job numbers since 2006, and CWIC board members believe building on collaboration among the firms can boost those figures.

“It truly is a paradigm shift for many of the old-school companies to consider working together,” added Forbes Guthrie of Stewart Environmental Consultants, and co-chair of CWIC. “The carrot on the stick is to really be able to more effectively land really large projects.”

Eight local companies

The cluster is centered around eight local companies – including In-Situ Inc., Stewart Environmental, Riverside Technology Inc., and others – and the city of Fort Collins and CSU. Each entity offers a range of services, from software development and technical expertise to social research and environmental planning.

The mix of concentrations is one of the reasons that water innovation didn’t initially draw attention when the city first identified industry clusters, including clean energy and bioscience, in 2005.

As it now stands, CWIC proponents can work off the lessons and achievements of the Clean Energy Cluster, in particular.

“I don’t think we could have grown as quickly and collectively if it wasn’t for the trailcutting that the Clean Energy Cluster has provided,” Guthrie said.

He added that CWIC’s organization over the past year has been comparable to the initial progress of the Clean Energy Cluster’s first three years, in terms of setting goals and moving forward with proposals.

The water-innovation cluster’s first formal project will facilitate a demonstration project for alternative water transfers between agriculture and municipal use.

Transfer of water supplies and rights from farms to cities is a major concern in the state and the West. Since it’s cheaper for municipal utilities to buy water rights from rural land owners than to develop new reservoirs and pipelines, urban and suburban growth mostly proceeds through the purchase of farms’ and ranches’ water. The transactions reduce the state’s agricultural base, a regrettable shift known as “buy and dry.”

The cluster propses to create a financially and environmentally viable alternative to the practice, using a mix of policy and technology tools. A pilot project will transfer “wet” water – actual flows – from the Lake Canal system to the Cache la Poudre River during summer months to boost the river’s volume and more closely resemble natural conditions when irrigators most need water for crops, according to Birks.

The project, which involves the canal irrigation company, The Nature Conservancy and the city, should demonstrate that technology and targeted management can help meet municipal and conservation demands without permanently snatching water away from farms. Among the cluster’s participants, Regenesis Management Group based in Denver, has developed a software tool to aid farmers in “deficit irrigation” practices and guide the temporary transfer of water. Aqua Engineering Inc., of Fort Collins will handle the water accounting, calculating irrigation and other use rates and river flows.

The techniques should enable farmers to use a significantly lower amount of water to grow a slightly lower yield of crops.

The cluster has applied for a grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board to support the project, since its results could help the state figure out a solution to the looming gap in water for cities, industries, farms and the environment.

CSU’s Colorado Water Institute will provide analysis on the social and economic impacts surrounding these types of transfers, which is a key but sometimes overlooked aspect of water projects, said MaryLou Smith, co-founder of Aqua Engineering, who is now on staff as a policy specialist and CSU faculty member through the water institute.

Projects in the pipeline

Other projects are queued up in CWIC’s pipeline, and the board will be considering next steps at upcoming meetings. One idea receiving attention is the launch of a Watershed Academy that will use software to build awareness among schoolchildren, politicians and the public about various health measures within the river system. The program would collect real-time data on flows, chemical concentrations and other environmental indicators to help educate and then inform policy decisions.

CWIC board members are also anticipating another project to test graywater reuse within individual buildings. A  demonstration would likely try to redirect graywater – flows coming out of sinks and showers – to then flush toilets and safely minimize water use.

The project could utilize anaerobic digester technology being developed by Sybil Sharvelle, a CSU professor, with support from Stewart Environmental.

“Our objective as a cluster is to very directly come out with projects that create jobs at the end of the day,” Guthrie said. “These clusters are fantastic catalysts for marketing Fort Collins and this region as a center for excellence. Everything we’re starting to do with water – it’s really the next opportunity to elevate our visibility nationwide, and worldwide for that matter, as a leader in the ability to think through these infrastructure projects, create jobs, and create some place people want to live.”

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