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Drought diminishes river# Front Range settlers began moving water over the divide almost as soon as they arrived, building the Grand Ditch near the Colorado River's headwaters in the early 1900s. Since then, driven by some of the fastest growth rates in the West, the Front Range has punched through the mountains 11 more times, building more ditches or drilling tunnels to move river water east. The largest is the Colorado -Big Thompson Project, completed in 1959. It diverts water from the Colorado River - up to 310,000 acre -feet per year, or enough to serve nearly 1.5 million people - not far downstream from the Grand Ditch. The water is impounded in two reservoirs and a natural lake and then sent beneath the Continental Divide through a 13 -mile tunnel that empties into the first of a string of six reservoirs. As the water is moved through the reservoirs, it also generates small amounts of power. One of the oldest power plants sits on the edge of Lake Estes, a compact reservoir tucked just off the touristy shopping district in Estes Park. Two elk graze outside the gated parking lot as midday traffic whizzes past. Brian Person, who oversees the Colorado -Big Thompson Project for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, traces the project's scope as giant turbines hum in the background. The drought has forced the bureau to dip deeply into its storage, Person said, just as it has downriver at Lake Powell. Lake Granby, the largest of the project's reservoirs, is less than half -full. As a result, customers on the Front Range receive less water. "The project is amazingly flexible," Person said. "But there's only so far it can go, only so much it can do. Even a project of this scope couldn't handle what was being thrown at it hydrologically." Down the Front Range, the drought has tightened water supplies for most big cities. Denver, which uses water from the Colorado River as well as other rivers, imposed restrictions on its residents two years ago and has left them in place to try to replenish storage in its string of reservoirs. The city used models based on the regional 1950s drought to test its water supply and concluded that no serious shortages would occur. "But we don't know how long this drought will last," said Ed Pokorney, planning director for Denver Water. "it could last three years, six years, nine years. There is no typical drought. It's one of the perils of living in the West." Pokorney helps Denver Water plan for and acquire new water sources to accommodate growth. The utility's modern office is shoehorned into an industrial area of the city, along the South Platte River, one of Denver's other major water sources. With supplies on the Front Range severely limited, the string of cities and suburbs wants to develop more water from the Western Slope to accommodate future growth. Denver, for example, needs to add another 45,000 to 75,000 acre -feet of water to its portfolio. Some growing suburbs need even more. Talks are under way up and down the Western Slope to shift water east, refueling disputes that have split the east and west for more than a century. Peter Rosseman, an education specialist for the Colorado River Water Conservation District, knows how people on the Western Slope feel. "These people get to shovel the snow, drive through it all winter long," he said, "but as soon as it melts, someone else comes in and says, 'It's ours.' ' Ranches vs. suburbs For Duane Scholl, the Kremmling rancher, the problem with people on the eastern slope is an inability to recognize limits. "They don't have the political courage over there to tell developers, 'No, there's no more taps,'" Scholl said one afternoon as he finished paperwork at his insurance office in Kremmling. "in Denver, they think there's no end to water. They're not willing to admit the water supply is finite." Page 4 of 5 http:// Www. azcentral .comispecialslspecia1061 articles /0722colorado- drought.html 7/27/2004