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and environmentalists. As Denver Water proceeded with its plans for Foothills and the Strontia <br />Springs Dam, it had to confront the uncomfortable realities presented by the federal Clean Water <br />Act, National Envirorunental Policy Act, Federal Land Management Act, and the ESA. The <br />Foothills facility posed no ESA problem, but after a long process of negotiations involving other <br />Federal Environmental legislation ending in a 1979 settlement, Denver received permission to <br />proceed with the Foothills system which was finally completed in 1983. Through much public <br />controversy, the Foothills Treatment Plant came online, but only under the agreement that Denver <br />Water would conduct a system wide environmental impact statement for its water projects, <br />implement a water conservation program, and appoint a citizens advisory committee to the <br />Denver Water Board (Lochhead 2000). Denver Water, by that point was firmly in a relationship <br />with the federal environmental agenda. <br />Colorado Nexus: Colorado-Big Thompson and the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy <br />District <br />By the 1930's, irrigators planting more than 3 million acres on the Front Range and <br />eastward fringes of the South Platte were annually running short of water from new lands being <br />brought into production, and from a shift from grain to more water intensive crops. From 1925 to <br />1933 fanns had less than half of the water needed. Farmers, along with the Great Western Sugar <br />Company, Platte Valley ranchers, Colorado Agricultural College, local newspapers and chambers <br />of commerce, organized the first Northern Colorado Water Users Association in 1934 to lobby for <br />diversions of water across the continental divide (Abbott, 1976) (Tyler, 1992). The Bureau of <br />Reclamation started construction on the Colorado-Big Thompson project (C-BT) in 1938 and <br />finished most of its construction by 1953. The C-BT project diverts water from the Colorado <br />River to the Big Thompson via the 13.1 mile Alva B. Adams Tunnel. Compensatory storage for <br />west slope users was provided by Green Mountain Reservoir located on the Blue River. <br />The Colorado-Big Thompson Project was one of the most complex projects undertaken by <br />the Bureau of Reclamation in the West. It consists of over 100 structures integrated into a <br />transmountain diversion system that provided supplemental water for agricultural and municipal <br />users on over 720,000 acres of Colorado's northern front range and a stretch of eastern plains <br />along the South Platte. The project has annually diverted volumes ranging mostly between <br />220,000 and 260,000 acre feet (310,000 acre feet is maacimum) from the Colorado river <br />headwaters on the West side of the continental divide to the Big Thompson drainage, a tributary <br />of the South Platte. By comparison, Denver Water's annual diversions from the West slope have <br />been in the range of 110,000 acre feet. The project is sponsored and operated by the Northern <br />Colorado Water Conservancy District which apportions the water to more than 120 mutual ditch <br />company associations, 60 mutual reservoirs, and eleven towns and cities. Electric power revenues <br />produced by six powerplants though which water drops on its way down the east side has done <br />much to subsidize re-payment of initial costs of capitalization. <br />The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District (NCWCD) was created to sponsor <br />and manage the operation and repayment of the C-BT project within terms and conditions <br />established by USBR. Having been constructed with federal dollars, the C-BT project would <br />necessarily operate under the terms and conditions specified in permits to be granted under <br />22