Organizing for Endangered and Threatened Species Habitat Draft

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Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the ESA. After a long pi•ocess of negotiations ending in a 1979 settlement, Denver received permission to proceed with the Foothills system which was finally completed in 1983. Through much public controversy, the Foothills Treatment Plant came online, but only under the agreement that Denver Water would conduct a system wide environmental impact statement for its water projects, implement a water conservation program, and appoint a citizens advisory conunittee to the Denver Water Board (Lockhead 2000). Denver Water, by that point was firmly in a relationship with the federal environmental agenda. Colorado Nexus: Colorado-Big Thompson and the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District By the 1930's, irrigators planting more than 3 million acres on the Front Range and eastward fringes of the South Platte; were annually running short of water from new lands being brought into production, and from a shift from grain to more water intensive crops. From 1925 to 1933 farms had less than half of thE; water needed. Farmers, along with the Great Western Sugar Company, Platte Valley ranchers, (:olorado Agricultural College, local newspapers and chambers of commerce, organized the first Northern Colorado Water Users Association in 1934 to lobby for diversions of water across the conti.nental divide (Abbott, 1976) (Tyler, 1992). The Bureau of Reclamation started construction oin the Colorado-Big Thompson project (C-BT) in 1938 and finished most of its construction by 1953. The C-BT project diverted water from the Colorado River to the Big Thompson via the 13.1 mile Alva B. Adams Tunnel. Compensatory storage for west slope users was provided by Cireen Mountain Reservoir located on the Blue River. The Colorado-Big Thompson Project was one of the most complex projects undertaken by the Bureau of Reclamation in the West. It consists of over 100 structures integrated into a transmountain diversion system that provided supplemental water for agricultural and municipal users on over 720,000 acres of Colorado's northern front range and a stretch of eastern plains along the South Platte. The project has annually diverted volumes ranging mostly between 220,000 and 260,000 acre feet (310,000 acre feet is maximum) from the Colorado river headwaters on the West side of the continental divide to the Big Thompson drainage, a tributary of the South Platte. By comparison, Denver Water's annual diversions from the West slope have been in the range of 110,000 acre feet. The project is sponsored and operated by the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District which apportions the water to more than 120 mutual ditch company associations, 60 mutual reservoirs, and eleven towns and cities. Electric power revenues produced by six powerplants thoug;h which water drops on its way down the east side has done much to subsidize re-payment of irkitial costs of capitalization. The Northern Colorado Wa.ter Conservancy District (NCWCD) was created to sponsor and manage the operation and repayment of the C-BT project within terms and conditions established by USBR. Having bee;n constructed by Federal dollars, the C-BT project was in a federal relationship and all that would mean for continued permitting requirements. The C-BT's original mission was to supply sup;plemental water to agriculture and municipalities within Northern's boundaries. In 1957, thie first full year of water deliveries, there were 720,000 acres of land in production in the district; but by 1990, urbanization had reduced the acreage to about 630,000.(Tyler 1992). Northern's interest is best served if water released by agricultural dry-ups 21