Larimer County commissioners to Corps: We back NISP

FORT COLLINS — Larimer County commissioners on Tuesday voted to forward a citizens’ advisory board’s list of critical comments about a controversial water-storage proposal to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — but added their own letter supporting the project.

The commission had asked the all-volunteer Environmental and Science Advisory Board to review a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed Northern Integrated Supply Project, which the Corps released in June. The ESAB report, dated Aug. 18, blasted what it called the SDEIS’ lack of detail on key issues and included a long list of concerns about NISP’s effect on such things as flows, fish habitat and water quality in the Cache la Poudre River as well as plans to mitigate the problems.

The county commissioners voted 3-0 to send the ESAB report to the Corps — accompanied by a letter from the commissioners saying that Larimer County is not opposed to NISP and believes the ESAB concerns can be addressed sufficiently. The commissioners’ letter lays out why it believes NISP to be very important to the future of Northern Colorado.

Fort Collins’ city staff also was critical of the impact statement for leaving key questions unanswered, and recommended last week that the Fort Collins City Council vote to express conditional opposition to NISP. The city council will consider that recommendation at Tuesday night’s regular session, which will be broadcast on cable Channel 14.

The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District would build NISP if it receives a federal permit. If approved, NISP would include construction of Glade and Galeton reservoirs, which combined could store more than 215,000 acre-feet of water, 40,000 of which would be allocated to municipal water supplies annually.

Glade Reservoir, which would be larger than Horsetooth Reservoir west of Fort Collins, would be built north of the intersection of U.S. Highway 287 and Colorado Highway 14 northwest of the city and would hold up to 170,000 acre-feet of water diverted from the Poudre River. Galeton Reservoir would be built east of Ault and Eaton in Weld County and hold up to 45,000 acre-feet of South Platte River water.

About a dozen cities and towns and four water districts have signed up to buy water from the NISP project if it wins final approval from the Corps. Supporters, including the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, the Northern Colorado Legislative Alliance and many other business- and agriculture-backed groups, see the project as crucial to keeping up with the growing demands of development, industry and agriculture along the Front Range.

Opponents, including Fort Collins-based Save the Poudre and the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, have said the project would drain water from the Poudre as it flows through Fort Collins, limiting opportunities for recreation that include tubing, whitewater kayaking and fishing.

Northern Water’s boundaries include about 880,000 people living on 1.6 million acres in portions of Boulder, Broomfield, Larimer, Weld, Logan, Morgan, Sedgwick and Washington counties.

The Corps is accepting comments through Friday on the SDEIS and the proposed project.

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