Larimer ends long saga, OKs Thornton water pipeline

FORT COLLINS — A reluctant Board of Larimer County Commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday night to grant the city of Thornton’s application to send water it owns through 10.4 miles of pipeline across the county.

The approval came more than three hours into the third night of hearings on the Denver suburb’s “1041” application, and followed its lengthy presentation on why letting Thornton’s water flow through the Cache la Poudre River instead, an option preferred by the majority of residents who testified during previous sessions, could not be accomplished.

“If I could turn back the clock, I would,” said an emotional board chairman John Kefalas, but added that “I believe this is the best we can do to protect the Poudre River, help preserve critical farmland, open space and natural habitats, and minimize the impacts to landowners and the communities.”

Thornton will construct the 42-inch-diameter pipeline to connect with other segments in Weld and Adams counties, delivering water it owns from six Larimer County farms it purchased in the 1980s. Its representatives say developers in the thirsty north Denver suburb need the water to provide more affordable or attainable housing.

Five segments of the pipeline in Weld and Adams counties have been completed or will be soon, and the Larimer County section is the final piece.

Larimer County’s planning commission voted 5-3 to approve Thornton’s latest plan in April and to recommend that the county commissioners do the same.

Emily Hunt, Thornton’s deputy infrastructure director for water, told commissioners that diverting water through the Poudre instead would “not meet our purpose and needs,” pointing to degradation she said would occur because it would pass multiple wastewater treatment plants and be tainted by runoff from urban stormwater and agricultural uses as well as evaporation.

“Diverted water can be treated, this is true,” she said, “but it’s extremely energy intensive and it also increases the risk to public health because you’re relying on chemicals, technology, to remove pathogens and that sort of thing, which, if we don’t have to remove them in the first place, it’s simply more protective.”

Hunt said sending water through the river instead of the pipeline “requires advanced water treatment as opposed to conventional water treatment. Advanced water treatment is possible, but it requires an intense amount of energy to treat with an advanced treatment process versus a conventional treatment process.”

Filtering that water, she said, would result in water loss and create brine that would have to be disposed of.

Hunt said Thornton needed access to 14,000 acre feet of water per year from the project, and that “we need to be able to deliver this water to the city of Thornton year round.”

Thornton’s water, diverted from the river above Fort Collins, is already stored in Water Supply and Storage Co. reservoirs and can’t be sent through WSSC canals instead because that water, she said, is “only diverted from the river during the irrigation season, from May to September, and then the ditch turns off.

“We likely would have to build a significant amount of new storage downstream somewhere in order to capture that full 14,000 acre-feet in that very limited window of time when WSSC’s water rights are in priority,” Hunt said.

“We specifically acquired water rights in the WSSC system because of the robustness of the infrastructure that already existed in that system,” she said. “The river diversion and a canal already exist, so we don’t need to build a river diversion. The reservoirs are a huge component of the WSSC system. We can use existing reservoirs that have been in place for a century without having to build new reservoirs and disrupt additional land.

“We spent 12 years in water court to obtain the legal right to use this water in the way that we need to use it,” Hunt said. “We do not intend to go back to change any part of this decree because it’s a 12-year process and we bought the water rights and privileges through the water court.”

As it did in 2019, Thornton was seeking a “1041 approval” from the county. Named for House Bill 1041, passed by the Colorado Legislature in 1974, it’s a set of regulations that give local governments authority to regulate issues of “statewide concern,” including those involving transportation and the protection of specific geographic, historic, cultural and natural resources. Larimer County first adopted 1041-based regulations in 2008 and added water and sewer transmission lines in 2009.

The county denied Thornton’s earlier attempt, and a district judge upheld the county’s decision.

This time, Larimer County’s commissioners did win 83 conditions for approval, including some outlined Wednesday night that involved topsoil salvaging, dam safety, tree protection and mitigation, refined air-pollution mitigation, lighting operations during pipeline construction, a lighting plan for a pumphouse, and minimized space between Thornton’s pipeline and one operated by the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District as part of its proposed Northern Integrated Supply Project Water in stretches where the two are co-located.

“It’s clear that people in our community love the Poudre River, and it’s the same for the commissioners up here,” said commissioner Kristin Stephens, but added that, “while our 1041 regulations allow us to consider alternative siting for a pipeline, the Court of Appeals held that Larimer County can’t require Thornton to send its water down the Poudre River. It would exceed our 1041 jurisdiction, which is given to us by state statute, so we have to abide by that. That’s left to the water courts.

“So we’re left with a decision that’s not easy to make, especially after hearing public comment,” she said. She said she wished the Poudre River option could be employed “because it’s what our community wants. We can’t do that, so we’re left with what kind of pipeline alignment would work best. This is the best of what feels like a bad solution.”

“It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the ones before,” agreed commissioner Jody Shadduck-McNally. “I wish there was a way for the water to stay in the river as long as possible. How do we speak for a river that’s way over-appropriated? Unfortunately, changing water law is not in our purview.”

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