May 21, 2011 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
PUEBLO — As much as 100 million gallons a day of Arkansas River water trapped in a reservoir for southern Colorado and downriver states is about to take a left turn — to Colorado’s biggest water project in decades.
Construction crews this week began work on the $2.3 billion Southern Delivery System. It is designed to pump water uphill and north from Pueblo Reservoir — through a 62-mile pipeline — to sustain Colorado Springs, which owns the rights to the river water, and other growing Front Range cities.
The cities embarked on this project because water supplies have emerged as a constraint on population growth.
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April 27, 2011 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
South metro suburbs worried about a slowing flow of underground water are preparing to spend billions to end their reliance on super-deep wells to supply tens of thousands of households.
Today, nearly every glass of water drawn by residents in Castle Rock, Castle Pines and Parker originates deep underground, data from utility managers show.
Twenty-five utilities between Denver and Colorado Springs are together pumping 38,742 acre-feet of water from 449 municipal wells each year, according to data provided by the water suppliers.
That works out to about 400 gallons per second being squeezed from the Denver Basin aquifer.
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March 16, 2011 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Developers citing the need to deal with looming water shortages propose to build a massive reservoir in the foothills southwest of Denver.
But they don’t have water to fill it.
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March 13, 2011 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Colorado farmers still own more than 80 percent of water flowing in the state, but control is rapidly passing from them as growing suburbs move to secure supplies for the future.
The scramble is intensifying as aging farmers offer their valuable water rights to thirsty cities, drying up ag land so quickly that state overseers are worried about the life span of Colorado’s agricultural economy.
“The status quo has been going to agriculture (interests) and buying and drying. That’s not good,” said John Stulp, a cattle rancher and former state agriculture commissioner who is Gov. John Hickenlooper’s special policy adviser on water. “We need to do it in a smarter way.”
Since 1987, Colorado farmers and ranchers have sold at least 191,000 acre-feet of water to suburbs, according to a review of water transactional data.
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February 7, 2011 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Colorado has so many deficient dams restricted from holding water that, if owners were to fix them, the state would gain four Chatfield Reservoirs worth of coveted water-storage capacity.
A review of state dam safety records also shows that a breach at any of 21 “high hazard” dams today likely would kill people living or working nearby. Failures at another 33 deficient “significant hazard” dams would cause major property damage.
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July 24, 2010 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Natural Resources, Water
CHEESMAN RESERVOIR — Next week, Denver Water embarks on an $18.3 million plumbing overhaul of corroding fixtures on 105-year-old Cheesman Dam, requiring jackhammers, blowtorches, drills, blasting — and divers dispatched to live underwater for a month in a compression chamber.
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July 21, 2010 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water, Wildlife
A Denver-based federal team fighting invasive freshwater mussels is investigating new and hopeful treatments, including poison, blasts of ultra-violet light and shock waves, and the introduction of a mussel-destroying predatory sunfish.
The researchers testing these tactics say some seem to work and, if proved, could save tens of millions of dollars by protecting western hydropower and water delivery facilities against the proliferating Eurasian quagga and zebra mussels.
“Once the mussels are there, this would help control them,” said U.S. Bureau of Reclamation mussel program coordinator Leonard Willett, who this week was supervising tests at dams along the lower Colorado River.
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July 11, 2010 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Front Range authorities poised to divert more western Colorado water to the east face opponents rallying around the mountain lake.
With current diversions already suspected by some of mucking up Grand Lake’s water, any new water removals — such as those proposed by Denver Water and the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District — could degrade the lake intolerably, opposition groups and Grand County officials contend.
“I know (Front Range residents) want to take showers, but we have to co-exist. They can’t destroy the beauty here — which is probably part of why they came to Colorado in the first place,” said Pat Raney, 66, one of a dozen or so volunteers who test water quality.
Lying on her belly on the deck of a rocking pontoon boat on the lake, Raney lowered a disc used to measure underwater visibility: “7 feet 4 inches,” she reported to fellow volunteers. “Color is brown.”
That’s less one third of the 30-feet visibility documented in 1941 before diversions here began.
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July 5, 2010 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Denver-area authorities are embarking on $760 million worth of massive water-treatment projects, to convert substandard water into drinkable new supplies.
The projects are driven by scarcity — the growing difficulty of drawing sufficient new supplies from mountain snowpack — and by rapid depletion of groundwater wells that some metro residents rely on.
Water providers say they also increasingly are detecting new contaminants, such as pharmaceutical residues from birth-control pills, cosmetics and antidepressants, that they anticipate might have to be removed.
“We’re preparing for the future. There’s still expected to be a lot of growth along Colorado’s Front Range. That’s what these plants are for,” said Steve Witter, water resources manager for the Arapahoe County Water and Wastewater Authority.
“And there may be more contaminants in the water, which we will need to treat,” Witter said.
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June 20, 2010 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Colorado River water consumed yearly for agriculture and by the 30 million Westerners who rely on it now exceeds the total annual flow.
A growing awareness of that limited flow is leading to increased scrutiny of urban development — especially projects that require diverting more water to the east side of the Continental Divide.
“We’re no longer in a surplus situation,” said Bill McDonald, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s deputy commissioner for policy and budget. “The teeter-totter has tipped.”
Federal data show that the average annual use of Colorado River water (15.4 million acre-feet) has surpassed the average annual supply (14.5 million acre-feet) in the river.
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A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
