Confluence: Water managers face whatever crisis is on tap

BOULDER — This week’s quartet of wildfires raging in the Front Range foothills gave an extra sense of urgency to a Thursday discussion among water managers about how to keep the flow coming during uncertain times.

Their consensus: Learn from past events, develop relationships and agreements among agencies, create redundant systems, and just accept that changing conditions are inevitable.

“Last year was one of the wettest years on record, and this year it’s the complete opposite,” Patrick Wells, a water-strategy specialist for the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, said during a panel discussion at BizWest’s Confluence Colorado Water Summit at Embassy Suites Boulder. “The same thing happened in 2012 with the High Park Fire, and the following year we had a record flood in September.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen from year to year, so the water provider just needs to be prepared for everything and be able to make adjustments on the fly as needed to meet those challenges.”

“This is our new normal,” agreed Joe Taddeucci, Boulder public works director. “Last year it was so wet. Water revenue and sales were down in Boulder because it was such a wet year. And now it feels like a drought.”

Droughts, a Western State University colleague told Cole Gustafson, “are nothing more than one really nice day strung together after another after another, so these things can kind of sneak up on you. You can be lulled into complacency.”

Gustafson, Greeley’s source water supply manager, noted that “it’s amazing how fast things can change, from the wet conditions that are bordering on flooding to a transition into hot and dry conditions, and what those complicating effects are with vegetation growth and soil moisture and fuel moisture.

“We always have to stay vigilant,” he said. “Although we enjoy our climate here in Colorado, all it takes is one heat dome that sets up over the western United States and the situation can change dramatically.”

Such dramatic changes are just another day at the office for a water manager, Wells said.

“I don’t lose a lot of sleep over that, because that’s our job as operators and providers, to figure out how to get water to the taps during times of emergency,” he said. “It’s those times why we have built-in systems and redundancy to meet that. And water systems learn from things that have happened in the past.”

One of those lessons involves what happens to water quality along the Front Range urban corridor after a wildfire in the foothills, when ash and debris get eroded into the creeks. During the High Park Fire, Gustafson served as Fort Collins’ lead water treatment operator.

“Our water treatment plant was not built to handle the after effects of that, of what that fire would do to water quality,” he said, “and so we had to learn how to handle it when there’s a rainstorm up in a watershed that’s been burned. We weren’t prepared to deal with that amount of sediment load, much less to treat it.”

It’s an extra challenge when water managers face multiple crises, Gustafson said.

“Water-supply risks are manifesting earlier and more intensely than many of us previously forecasted,” he said. “What’s also concerning is how these risks overlay on one another. I’ve been involved in numerous situations where we’ve had a major infrastructure outage and had to delay rehabilitating our system due to budget constraints or operational constraints or other factors — and right as we’re in the middle of that, we’re faced with a drought or wildfire or some other condition that adds to the complexity and makes it more challenging to operate a water system and maintain reliable, safe drinking water to customers.”

Aging and inadequate infrastructure presents its own challenges, Taddeucci said.

“Boulder is a really old city, started back in the 1800s,” he said, noting that between water, wastewater, stormwater and flood-control infrastructure, “some of those components are 100 years old.

“Boulder was formed so early, before modern flood-plain regulation, and Boulder is known as the number one flood risk in Colorado because of our proximity to the foothills,” he said. “We have Boulder Creek that comes in, and 16 other drainages that run through the city.

“We have a huge backlog of flood projects as we try to retrofit an older city to modern flood-plain regulations. So we’re always keeping up with that infrastructure and keeping an eye on the affordability of our services.”

The water managers agreed that solidifying relationships and creating agreements with agencies in advance are keys to rapid response to emergencies.

“During these events,” Wells said, “we know that the feds are involved, so we make sure they’re aware of where our assets are and be available if they need us, make sure they know our water in our reservoirs are available.”

Added Taddeucci, “We’re continually learning from the past and learning for the future.”