Greeley Chamber throws support behind Terry Ranch aquifer acquisition

GREELEY — The Greeley Chamber’s board unanimously voted to support the city’s coming efforts to acquire rights to the Terry Ranch aquifer at the Colorado-Wyoming border as the city council approaches a deadline for the deal.

In a statement, the group said purchasing the aquifer is a way to secure the city’s water needs as its population grows and honors the area’s legacy of water innovation, hearkening back to the days of Greeley’s involvement in establishing the Colorado-Big Thompson project to bring water from the Western Slope to the Front Range.

“With our population expected to top 260,000 by 2065, an eye on the future is necessary, as water is the lifeblood for not only our business community but our community at large,” chamber CEO Jaime Henning said in a statement.

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Greeley city staffers are currently completing due diligence on the project, and the City Council is expected to be presented with a sales contract in March.

The Terry Ranch project would give the city access to enough space to store 1.2 million acre-feet of water that it would inject into the underground basin and pull out later in the event of droughts or wildfires threatening the water sources from the mountains. It would replace the Milton Seaman Reservoir expansion as the city’s main water security project.

The city intends to finance the acquisition by issuing water credits to the owner of the aquifer, who would in turn sell the credits to developers seeking to fulfill their raw water requirements with Greeley before they can break ground. Transformation of the water into a city property is projected to cost $506 million by the year 2100.

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