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wide restriction efforts. Most of the wells in Douglas County are in the Denver Basin <br />aquifers, which have little or no annual recharge. The future problem of the Denver <br />Basin is that it contains a massive but essentially nonrenewable supply of water and will <br />eventually become prohibitively expensive to pump at current and projected withdrawal <br />levels without artificial recharge. As Douglas County grows, water levels in the aquifers <br />will drop and the number of wells must be continually increased to sustain current <br />pumping levels. This effect is independent of whether or not we have a drought. <br />Some providers also implemented measures to increase their supplies. Examples <br />included canceling municipal leases of water to farmers, leasing irrigation rights from <br />farmers, reducing minimum streamflow bypasses, utilizing ditch water or treated effluent <br />for irrigating park lands, drilling supplemental wells and, in the case of some small water <br />systems, trucking in emergency water supplies. Lafayette traded Colorado -Big <br />Thompson (CBT) project (Bureau of Reclamation project operated by the Northern <br />Colorado Water Conservation District (NCWCD)) water to Boulder for Boulder's <br />Baseline Reservoir water. This trade allowed each city to give up water that it controlled <br />but could not easily use in exchange for water that was more directly deliverable. In <br />similar fashion, Eldora ski area acquired a lease on CBT water and traded that water to <br />Louisville in exchange for using some of Louisville's Marshall Reservoir water as an <br />exchange supply for increased snowmaking diversions from South Boulder Creek for the <br />upcoming season. <br />A few utilities began building facilities to allow them to make better use of their existing <br />water rights. Lafayette began building a new diversion from Boulder Creek upstream of <br />Boulder's wastewater discharge in order to maximize use of its Boulder Creek water <br />rights. The Town of Kremmling began construction of a Colorado River pipeline to use <br />its conditional rights from that source. Broomfield continued developing facilities to <br />increase its reuse of treated wastewater effluent for irrigation. <br />Providers also invoked a variety of drought reservations that allowed them to reduce <br />bypass requirements and to interrupt agricultural leases. Denver Water invoked drought <br />reservations that allowed it to reduce its minimum flow bypasses at its Fraser basin points <br />of diversion and at Strontia Springs Reservoir and to stop others' irrigation diversions <br />temporarily above Williams Fork Reservoir. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation similarly <br />decreased its minimum flow bypasses below Granby Reservoir in accordance with <br />drought provisions in its agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. <br />Boulder invoked its drought reservation with the Colorado Water Conservation Board <br />(CWCB) in order to use senior water rights for municipal purposes even though Boulder <br />had previously conveyed these rights to the CWCB for instream flow purposes. In spite <br />of this action, Boulder Creek streamflows remained at average flow levels because of the <br />interplay of extremely low streamflows and water rights: senior rights at the bottom of <br />Boulder Creek called out water rights that normally dried up the creek from upstream <br />locations. <br />24 <br />