Denver Water Richard Stenzel
Dillon Reservoir and other reservoirs constructed as part of transbasin diversion projects provide recreational opportunities, along with benefits such as flood control, in both basins of origin and receiving basins. Boating, fishing, camping and hiking are just some of the activities these reservoirs afford visitors.
Located at the foot of Colorado’s highest peak, Mount Elbert Forebay is a staging point for water run through the Mount Elbert Powerplant, the state’s largest hydropower plant, as part of the Homestake and Fryingpan-Arkansas projects.
diversions and reservoirs in ways that enhance river environments or provide additional water for recreation. Another shift is that, in many cases, the water these projects deliver serves more thirsty cities while providing less water to agriculture. The Colorado-Big Thompson Project, completed in 1956 to serve growing agricultural water demand in northeastern Colorado, for example, delivered 97 percent of its water to agriculture in 1957, when the project made its
first deliveries. But in recent years, about 60 percent of all Colorado-Big Thompson water goes to agriculture, while 40 percent now serves municipal and industrial uses. Likewise, the Twin Lakes Project was constructed in the 1930s to provide supplementary transbasin water to farmers along the Colorado Canal in the Arkansas Basin, but today Colorado Springs Utilities holds about 62 percent of the water and Aurora Water owns about 5 percent. For Denver Water, which serves about 25 percent of the state’s population, transbasin diversions will comprise 50 percent of supply at full build-out. Denver’s large diversions have not only met its growing population’s basic needs for water, but also give city dwellers the pleasure of walking along tree-lined streets and recreating in green parks. More recently, Denver has been focusing more on water conservation and reuse to make the most of its water supplies and minimize the need for additional transbasin diversions. For example, once complete, Denver’s water recycling program will provide more than 15,000 acre-feet of recycled
1904-1905 Reclamation investigations ensue for a project to deliver water from the headwaters of the Colorado River under the Divide to the Big Thompson River or St. Vrain Creek
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water per year for industrial use and for irrigation and lakes in the city’s parks and golf courses. Aurora Water’s Prairie Waters system is also recapturing transbasin water—in exchange for some of the water it discharges, the city pulls from 17 downstream wells along the South Platte River. The water is subjected to natural filtration through hundreds of feet of sand and gravel before being pumped 34 miles back to a state-ofthe-art treatment facility. The treated water is blended with the city’s mountain supply and redistributed. By using the water twice, Aurora boosts its supply by more than 10,000 acre-feet annually—an amount that will reach 50,000 acre-feet at full build-out. With basin-of-origin communities looking to the Front Range to implement comprehensive conservation and reuse strategies to meet future water demand, much more potential remains for using transbasin diversion water multiple times. According to the Metropolitan Water Supply Investigation, future plans for reuse in the Denver metro area alone could provide another 160,000 acre-feet per year by 2050.
1905 Denver Union Water Company claims Two Forks site, which Denver and other Front Range cities will try to develop as a transbasin diversion between the late 1960s and 1990
WATER EDUCATION COLORADO