The Colorado Supreme Court ultimately decided in Thornton’s favor, appearing to clear the way for the construction of a pipeline. Fort Collins and other cities and water districts sued Thornton, arguing it couldn’t move water that was currently used for agricultural purposes downstream to be used for municipal needs, a process derisively called “buy and dry” by critics.
GEOLOGY ABANDONED MEANDER SERIES
But a series of conservation measures and the construction of new reservoirs in the 1990s held off that deadline for more than a decade.ĭuring those years, Thornton also overcame the first legal obstacles around its plan. Ethredge secured the water rights up north, Thornton planners figured they would need that water by 2000. In total, the city says 18,000 housing units, which could accommodate about 54,000 people, are not being built because the pipeline is tied up in red tape. A major affordable housing project is on hold for the same reason. With the pipeline stalled, Thornton is forced to limit its growth, with all kinds of negative fallout.Ĭity officials recently told a fast-growing company that makes a meat alternative using mushrooms that it had to pause expansion plans for lack of water. But no one can agree on precisely how Thornton should access it, and a fight is raging over the city’s plans to move that water down to the Denver suburbs. “How do you distribute a scarce and shrinking resource when there’s growing demand?”Īfter years of legal rancor, most of Thornton’s neighbors grudgingly agree that the city has a legal right to the water from up north. “It’s a classic economic problem,” said Jeni Arndt, the mayor of Fort Collins.
And in Thornton, there is no end in sight to the pipeline battle. In Texas, the city of San Antonio built a 150 mile pipeline to bolster its water supply, only to leave residents in the rural area where aquifers were being tapped complaining that their wells were running dry. And counties and cities are being forced to hunt for new sources of water, setting up clashes between neighboring communities.Īnother proposed pipeline in Colorado that would have brought water from the San Luis Valley to Douglas County ran into fierce resistance from lawmakers in Denver and was abandoned. Housing and other uses like agriculture are draining finite supplies of groundwater. The aquifers that supply 90 percent of the nation’s drinking water are being severely depleted. Jack Ethredge, Thornton’s former city manager.Īcross the country, tensions over water are mounting as climate change, drought and development strain an increasingly scarce natural resource. Plans to build the pipeline have been stymied by bureaucracy, lawsuits and ferocious debates over who is entitled to use the snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains. Ethredge secured for his city remains out of reach. Today, almost 40 years later, the water Mr. In practice, the problems were just beginning. In theory, Thornton’s water woes were solved. Ethredge, now retired, said in an interview. “In the water business you have to be years and years ahead of the game,” Mr. When the time was right, Thornton would divert the water from the Cache la Poudre River that irrigated that farmland, put it in a pipeline and send it downstate. The City Council bought about 17,000 acres of farmland 60 miles to the north, near Fort Collins, along with the associated water rights. Ethredge’s behest, Thornton went shopping. The city had drilled a dozen or so wells over the years, but the groundwater’s limited supply and high mineral content meant it wasn’t fit for drinking. The population was booming, businesses were flocking to the Mountain West, and Thornton had no major lakes or rivers of its own, nor any meaningful amount of groundwater to draw upon, a fluke of geology and geography. Ethredge, then the city manager of Thornton, Colo., understood that sooner or later, the Denver suburb would need more water.
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