Firestone will soon treat water at its own facility

Editor’s note: The spelling of Gregg Ten Eyck’s last name has been corrected in this version of the story.

FIRESTONE — Beginning in April, Firestone will begin to produce treated water from its new water-treatment facility, dubbed the St. Vrain Water Treatment Plant.

The plant is one part of a multi-million dollar investment into diversifying the town’s water supply that includes the water plant, surface reservoirs, subsurface water in alluvial wells, conversion of irrigation water to municipal use and reuse of some water resources.

“The town years ago understood that the pressure on the supply side with C-BT [Colorado-Big Thompson] water and the upward pressure on price was going to put Firestone where it wouldn’t be able to achieve its growth goals,” said Town Manager A.J. Krieger. 

Firestone, like several growing communities along the northern Front Range, was largely dependent upon water from the Colorado-Big Thompson water project, which draws water from the Colorado River on the Western Slope and transports it to reservoirs and a network of supply lines in Northern Colorado. 

All of Firestone’s water, prior to the opening of the new treatment plant, is treated at the Carter Lake Filter Plant, which is jointly operated by regional water districts. In Firestone’s case, the Central Weld County Water District is under contract to treat and deliver C-BT water for Firestone.

“The town started investing money in an alternative approach,” Krieger said. That approach included tapping native supplies outside of the C-BT, creating treatment redundancy and taking new approaches. “It puts us in a position where we can grow in a far more cost-effective way,” he said.

The investment has not been cheap. The town has spent $76 million so far.

It issued bonds to build the treatment plant and build a storage system. Those bonds will be repaid by tap fees, a storage and infrastructure fee, and the usual monthly water bill payments from residents.

In 2016, the town hired LRE Water, a trade name for Leonard Rice Water Consulting Engineers Inc. of Denver, to pull together the pieces of its plan. 

“Large parcels of land were annexed into the city before the 2008 recession,” said Gregg Ten Eyck, an engineer with LRE. “Some of them [developers] sold their water at that point to maintain cash flow. That land even last year was irrigated with St. Vrain Creek water. We can take that water through water court and change from irrigation to municipal use, and essentially use it on the same property as before” but for housing instead of crops, he said.

Developers who own irrigation water now can dedicate it to the town in satisfaction of the town’s water requirements for new development. The treatment plant will process that native water and reduce the town’s reliance on C-BT, he said.

Instead of drawing the water from the creek, the town will draw water from alluvial wells — wells that are replenished from surface water — and also inject water when available back into the wells for storage, Ten Eyck said. The alluvial wells are relatively shallow at about 35 feet and are located north of the historic coal mines in the Carbon Valley.

The town also is a partner in the Windy Gap Firming Project and the Northern Integrated Supply Project — NISP. A reservoir to hold Windy Gap water is under construction near Carter Lake. The NISP project will include two large reservoirs when it is built.

Smaller reservoirs in Firestone — a 1,250-acre-foot reservoir is right across the road from the new treatment plant — will hold water resources before treatment. Ten Eyck said that irrigation water is traditionally available from April until October, the growing season, so it will need to be stored so that it can be used year-round. The one reservoir will not be enough, he said, so a second reservoir of about 1,000 acre feet is planned nearby, and additional reservoirs capable of holding “a couple of thousand acre feet” will be needed.

Ten Eyck said that in addition to the new sources of water, Firestone will take advantage of its ability to reuse some of its water supplies.

Unlike the C-BT project water, which can be used once and then must flow downstream to other users, the native supplies from St. Vrain Creek and Windy Gap water can be reused. 

“Windy Gap water is returned to the river as wastewater; the town can reuse a like quantity of water by taking additional quantities of alluvial water,” he said. 

In the case of irrigation water, historically, some share of it was consumed and the remainder would flow downstream. “The amount that historically was consumed can be reused ‘to extinction,’” he said.

The treatment plant, which will be operated by the St. Vrain Water Authority, an entity jointly controlled by Firestone and the Little Thompson Water District, will initially treat 1.5 million gallons of water a day. Two expansions are planned, the first of which will expand capacity to 2.25 million gallons per day, and the second expansion will bring it to 5 million gallons per day by 2050. Firestone uses 2.23 million gallons of treated water per day today.

“The plant by intention permits expansion within the plant and on the site,” Krieger said. The site is located a mile north of Colorado Highway 119 on Weld County Road 13. “We’ll serve our community first but be a little entrepreneurial to work with other communities” that might need water treatment, he said.

Little Thompson’s involvement will enable that water district to expand its treatment capacity in the future as well.

“We’re trying to avoid the situation that Severance is going through. I think you’ll see in the coming months, inside of a year or so, that the town of Firestone will announce interesting water partnerships using a combination of our reservoirs and treatment facility to partner with other communities,” Krieger said.

All of this is being paid for with fee schedules meant to recover the costs of growth. Developers will pay storage and infrastructure fees while homebuilders and commercial building contractors will pay tap fees that currently sit at $13,000 each for a residential tap.

A town press release that quoted Mayor Bobbie Sindelar said that the town’s water planning “has already provided the town with millions of dollars in new revenue through two new water agreements that were recently signed.”

Krieger identified Alberta Development Partners LLC as the entity that signed agreements with the town. Alberta, historically a commercial developer, has moved into residential development and has projects at Firestone. 

Donald Provost, founding principal of Alberta, said growth along Interstate 25 places Firestone in a good position. “Firestone’s plan to diversify is a smart move that will set the town apart from neighboring communities,” he said.

Krieger said Firestone does not expect the treatment plant and diversification plan to affect existing relationships such as that with the Central Weld County Water District, the town’s partner in treatment of its C-BT shares.

Firestone will face off against Central Weld in a jury trial scheduled for Nov. 28 this year over fees that the water district has charged. The town sued the district in August last year, when it discovered that the district was charging the town for water using a fee structure that should have expired. The district sought dismissal, saying that the town lacked standing to sue and that the statute of limitations should have passed. District Judge Shannon Lyons, however, denied the motion to dismiss in December and set the case for trial starting Nov. 28, 2022.

“That’s [the lawsuit] about money; this [diversification of supply] is about water,” Ten Eyck said.

As the date for production of treated water nears, town officials have become a bit giddy.

“Do you want to buy the first gallon [from the plant],” Krieger asked. “It’ll go for $76 million,” he quipped.

“And the second gallon will go for $1.99,” Ten Eyck said.

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