BOARD00597

• Board Meeting Date: 3/29/1999
• Description: South Platte Conjunctive Use Project - Overview of Project Status
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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Colorado Water Conservation Board

Department of Natural Resources
1313 Sherman Street
Denver, Colorado 80203
Phone' [phone]
FAX, (3031 866-4474

STATE OF COLOMDO

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Bill Owens
Governor

MEMORANDUM

Greg E. Walcher
Executive Director. DNR

Peter H. Evans
Director, ewes

TO:

CWCB members

FROM:

Dan McAuliffe

DATE:

March 25, 1999

RE:

Agenda Item 10 j, - South Platte Conjunctive Use Project

On March 9 the officials from the City of Aurora briefed CWCB staff about the status of
the city's proposed conjunctive use project. The following is a summary of the
information city officials provided.

The City of Aurora began looking at alternative water storage projects in 1995 following
the demise of the proposed Two Forks, Homestake II and Centennial water projects, In
1996 a group of private investors asked the city to consider a proposal to store water in
the Upper and Lower South Park Aquifers in Park County for municipal and industrial
use in dry years when adequate .surface water is not available, The city filed for water
rights for this purpose in January 1996, These applications are pending in District 1 water
court, This trial is scheduled to begin on May 1,

The major objectors to the applications are the CWCB (that holds an instream flow water
right on Terryall Creek), Indian Hills and Michigan Hills homeowners (that fear the
project will impact existing well water use), and the downstream cities of Englewood,
Denver and Thornton that are concerned about impacts on their South Platte water rights,
Park County, two ditch companies and some ranchers have also objected to the
application.

The project would be built in phases, The project involve collecting surface water from
Jefferson Creek (1,340 acre feet), Michigan Creek (970 acre feet), Terryall Creek (1,600
acre feetO and several other small streams (390 acre feet) during the spring run-off and
allowing it to percolate it into the aquifer beneath the Sportsmen's Ranch,

Before this water can be stored, the level of the aquifer must be decreased by about
110,000-acre feet. The stored water would then be pumped from the aquifer and
delivered to Park Gulch and T erryall Creek through a system of pipelines and ditches,
The water would then flow into the South Platte River for delivery to Strontia Springs
Reservoir, the city's raw water storage facility,