Confluence: Doing deals during the ‘perfect storm’ of water woes

LOVELAND — Water issues are a challenge for Northern Colorado developers, but that doesn’t mean that projects are impossible to complete or that growth must come to a standstill. 

Local officials and development dealmakers gathered Thursday in Loveland at BizWest’s annual Confluence water conference to discuss not only water-related challenges but also to celebrate success stories. 

“We’re oftentimes not talking about solutions; we’re just talking about problems,” Eklund Hanlon LLC CEO James Eklund said. That’s understandable, given the state is in the midst of the “worst water crisis Colorado has ever seen.”

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Eklund said Colorado is facing the “perfect storm” of challenges: a drying climate, increasing water demands and lack of agility from those in a position to solve problems.”

Thankfully, there are some folks in those positions who are coming up with creative solutions to Northern Colorado’s water problems. 

Greeley’s population is expected to roughly double to 260,000 by 2065, the city’s deputy water and sewer director Adam Jokerst said. “We have a good water supply today but we need to expand that water supply if we’re going to serve all of those people.”

Greeley scored a major win in that effort by acquiring the Terry Ranch aquifer, water rights beneath a large parcel of land along the Colorado-Wyoming border. 

The project creates space for 1.2 million acre-feet of water, enough to fulfill Greeley’s current water usage for 48 years.  

“This has the potential to serve us for a long time,” Jokerst said. 

While Terry Ranch does have groundwater, the acquisition is more of a storage play as Greeley plans to inject water into the aquifer for later use. 

The benefits of this technique are the lack of evaporation and minimized environmental impacts, Jokerst said. 

The acquisition deal was unique in that Greeley did not pay cash for the water rights. Rather, raw water credits were created for the prior owner to sell. In essence, Greeley traded future revenues for the ability to get the deal done now, Eklund said.  

The developers of the Montava project in Fort Collins faced a challenge: Water rights on the property had been absorbed by the city years back, leaving the parcel dry, according to Max Moss, HF2M Colorado Inc. president. 

To build the community, the developers first must build an alluvial groundwater-based system with a one-million-gallon-per-day capacity.

Upon build out, the system will result in a net increase to the Poudre River’s flow compared to historical irrigation use, Moss said. 

In a novel innovation, Moss plans to be able to provide residents with real-time usage data so they modify behavior when necessary. 

The Platte Valley Water Partnership is attempting to provide water to several communities while “trying to avoid ‘buy and dry’ in our area,” said Jim Yahn, North Sterling Irrigation District manager, referring to the practice of purchasing water rights on a property and then draining them.

The partnership has created a “win-win situation” for its members with a triangle connecting Parker with the Prewitt and Iliff reservoirs.

The system involves an operational trade between the two reservoirs and a pipeline from Northern Colorado to Parker.

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