Thornton’s new pipeline plan to be heard by April

LARIMER COUNTY — If the maximum amount of permitted time is used, Larimer County’s Board of Commissioners will hear the city of Thornton’s new plan for a water pipeline by April next year.

Thornton submitted a new application for a pipeline route on Monday in a massive document intended to comply with so-called 1041 regulations — a process that the city was required to traverse previously but was not successful in securing a permit to build the pipeline. In 2021, Larimer County denied the permit, and courts confirmed that the county was within its authority to deny.

Thus began a new process that Thornton this time has touted as one that included community outreach before routing plans were drawn.

“With an appreciation to the many Larimer County landowners and community stakeholders who provided valuable input over the last year, the city of Thornton (has) formally submitted a new application asking Larimer County to approve a permit to build a buried water pipeline for transporting water to Thornton,” the city said in a statement as it submitted the plan. “The Thornton Water Project will deliver an average of 14,000-acre feet of high-quality water Thornton owns in the Water Supply and Storage Co. system to its residents. This project is critical to ensure water supply reliability and drought resiliency, to provide drinking water that is protective of public health, safety and welfare, to support the availability of housing and to meet municipal water demands in the city through 2065.”

The pipeline route this time is different in multiple ways:

• It’s shorter by 16.6 miles and is now 10.4 miles within Larimer County. It’s 74 miles in total, with 50 of those miles in Weld County.
• A pump station on private property owned by the ditch company is farther away from residential developments.
• It crosses 22 private properties with input received from those property owners as to best alignments.
• The Douglas Road alignment has been abandoned; it now follows Larimer County Road East County Road 56.
• About 4.5 miles of the pipeline will follow the already approved pipeline alignment for the Northern Water Conservancy District’s Northern Integrated Supply Project.

In its public-relations campaign prior to submitting the new application, Thornton noted that the project, which began in the 1980s when the city bought 18,751 acres of land in Larimer and Weld counties in order to secure water rights attached to those farms, does not divert additional water from the Poudre River. The water that Thornton hopes will flow to the metropolitan suburb was already diverted as long ago as 1890 and has been used for agriculture. A Water Court decree gave Thornton permission to use the water for urban consumption.

Opponents of the project, among them Save the Poudre, said Tuesday that it will continue to oppose use of a pipeline to transport the water. It instead will continue to insist upon putting the water back in the Poudre to improve its flows through Fort Collins and then permit Thornton to remove the water at Windsor for piping to the city.

Thornton has objected to that approach because of contaminants that could enter the flow as it passes through Fort Collins. It has said a water-treatment plant to treat the water after it would flow through Fort Collins would cost $800 million to build and $44 million annually to operate.

Gary Wockner, who leads the Save the Poudre effort, told BizWest that it doesn’t buy Thornton’s numbers on the treatment concerns.

“Three years ago, it said a water plant would cost $100 million and now it’s $800 million,” he said. “It’s not Larimer’s problem how much it costs Thornton. … Thornton could have had the water 15 years ago. It doesn’t need a permit to run the water down the river. It’s not Larimer’s fault or Save the Poudre’s fault that it has taken this long,” Wockner said.

Save the Poudre will have its say as the new pipeline application makes its way through the county 1041 process — a process spelled out in state law that permits governments to have a say in what other governments want to do when projects have local impacts.

As noted by Larimer County planning manager Jenny Axmacher, county staff will first review the pipeline application to determine if it is complete as required by law. It has 60 days to conduct that review.

Then, “county staff and referral agencies review the application and prepare a staff report and recommendation. The county may, when necessary, hire a specialized consultant to assist with review at the applicant’s expense.

“No later than 30 days after receipt of a completed application, the county sets and publishes notice of the date, time, and place for a hearing before the county commissioners,” she said in a note to BizWest.

But before the county board of commissioners hears the plan, the county planning commission will conduct a hearing and prepare a recommendation for the board of commissioners. Notice of the planning commission hearing will be published 14 days before the hearing date, she said.

The board of county commissioners’ hearing must be conducted no later than 60 days after its notice of hearing is published. 

County commissioners have some options: They can approve the permit application, approve with conditions or deny the application, Axmacher said. She directed people to the county’s 1041 regulations here.

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