Headwaters Summer 2020: Keeping Up With Aging Infrastructure

KEEPING UP WITH AGING INFRASTRUCTURE Colorado Dams, Pipes, and Plants Demand Updates, Renewal

SUMMER 2020

LIFE DEPENDS ON WATER. WATER DEPENDS ON YOU. Sustaining a rural community is hard work.

Let CoBank handle the financing.

844-846-3135 • water@cobank.com www.cobank.com

Reach Out and We’ll Be There 2020 Summer Convening of the Colorado Water Congress Beginning August 25 Tuesdays and Thursdays at Noon

Pulse Water Device Helps Eateries Cut Costs as They Rebuild The Boss Defrost uses less water to thaw food than traditional processes do, saving restaurants money and reducing their water footprints.

9 New Laws Mean More Water for Environmental Flows Changes to Colorado law bring expanded opportunities to increase streamflows during low water years.

10 Fires Erupt in Midst of Risk-Reduction Planning As wildfires spread, a collaborative is working to reduce fire risk in southwestern Colorado.

Contents | Summer 2020 11

Inside

THE AGING INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUE Colorado has grown and changed around the water infrastructure installed decades to more than a century ago, leaving today’s water users and managers to grapple with the prospect of failing pipes, dams and ditches—the result of age and a lack of routine maintenance. Now, though the challenges and costs to rebuild and repair are significant, Coloradans have new opportunities to do so thoughtfully.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

4 WHAT WE’RE DOING

F E AT U R E

WEco's upcoming events, reporting and more.

5 FROM THE EDITOR

7 AROUND THE STATE

Water news from across Colorado.

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Nothing Lasts Forever

Building for Tomorrow

From leaking pipes to hazardous dams, water utilities are stepping up to meet aging water infrastructure needs with the data, tools and resources of today. Rebuilds and fixes can be expensive and rife with challenges — still, water managers are optimistic.

As old water infrastructure is phased out, now is the moment for next-gen infrastructure. These futuristic solutions are smart, sustainable, creative and collaborative.

By Kelly Bastone

By Jason Plautz

MEMBER’S CORNER

Engage, volunteer and celebrate the impact of WEco’s work.

31 Above: Crews install a 48-inch wood stave pipe in Denver in 1910. Introduced to the Denver area in the 1880s, wood stave pipes were once the backbone of Denver’s water infrastructure. Courtesy Denver Water On the cover: Steve Anderson, manager of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association, walks below an aging pipeline—the “twin tubes,” originally built out of wood in the early 1900s and reconstructed from steel in the 1960s—that carries water over Happy Canyon Creek southwest of Montrose. William Woody

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Jayla Poppleton Executive Director

Lisa Darling President

Jennie Geurts Director of Operations Sami Miller Membership and Engagement Officer

W

e are very fortunate to live in a state where early visionaries established the extensive system of built infrastructure that services much of our rural and urban population, our farms and our industries.

The challenge of keeping those systems in working order, while adding to and adapting, or, in some cases, decommissioning certain elements to meet current and future conditions is the focus of this issue.

Most of the systems we rely on today were built during eras when everything from materials to technology to regulations to community values looked much different.

We’ll need to keep learning and innovating as we forge ahead with our repairs, replacement and new needed infrastructure.

Running a longstanding organization has its similarities. You inherit the past, you work to maintain, and you keep building, adapting to today’s conditions and tomorrow’s forecasts. Certainly, offering programs during the COVID-19 public health crisis has tested our ingenuity and adaptability in an acute way!

Most of our in-person programs have gone virtual, from a self-guided, videoenhanced Urban Water Cycle Tour in Denver, to the first sessions of the 2020 Water Fluency and Water Leaders programs. We’ve worked to preserve the integrity of the experience by quickly adopting innovative technologies, and have heard participants are pleasantly surprised by the value of their engagement. One Water Fluency class member shared in late June: “Thank you again for an amazing two days of fun, education and new friends.”

Recent months have tested us in other ways. WEco was fortunate to start the year in a solid financial position, and to have diverse revenue streams. We are funded through a combination of grants, sponsorships, program registration fees, memberships and donations. Still, during fiscal year 2020, which ended June 30, 17 percent of our revenue came from a recurring $150,000 state allocation, put in place by the 2002 General Assembly. In response to severe state budget cuts, the legislature in June withdrew those funds.

We choose to stay positive and optimistic. We have a growing community of backers, a solid bench of resources, and a lineup of proven-effective programs—our foundational infrastructure. And we’ll rely on that foundation to sustain momentum in these unprecedented times. We’re committed to making our community feel more connected than ever, both to our work and to each other, despite ongoing restricted social contact. This fall, we look forward to hosting our first virtual President’s Reception and likely a hybrid virtual/physical Sustaining Colorado Watersheds conference. Things look different for us all, in many ways, but please don’t shy away—your support and participation is so valuable!

—Executive Director—

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STAFF

Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. Vice President Gregg Ten Eyck Secretary Alan Matlosz Treasurer

Stephanie Scott Leadership Programs Manager

Eric Hecox Past President

Scott Williamson Education & Outreach Coordinator

Nick Colglazier

Jerd Smith Fresh Water News Editor Caitlin Coleman Headwaters Editor & Communications Specialist Charles Chamberlin Headwaters Graphic Designer

Perry Cabot Sen. Kerry Donovan Paul Fanning Jorge Figueroa Matt Heimerich Greg Johnson Julie Kallenberger David LaFrance Dan Luecke Kevin McBride Amy Moyer Lauren Ris Rep. Dylan Roberts Travis Robinson Laura Spann Chris Treese Brian Werner

THE MISSION of Water Education Colorado is to ensure Coloradans are informed on water issues and equipped to make decisions that guide our state to a sustainable water future. WEco is a non-advocacy organization committed to providing educational opportunities that consider diverse perspectives and facilitate dialogue in order to advance the conversation about water.

HEADWATERS magazine is published three times each year by Water Education Colorado. Its goals are to raise awareness of current water issues, and to provide opportunities for engagement and further learning.

THANK YOU to all who assisted in the development of this issue. Headwaters’ reputation for balance and accuracy in reporting is achieved through rigorous consultation with experts and an extensive peer review process, helping to make it Colorado’s leading publication on water. © Copyright 2020 by the Colorado Foundation for Water

Education DBA Water Education Colorado. ISSN: 1546-0584

What we’re doing SUSTAINING COLORADO WATERSHEDS CONFERENCE OCT. 6-8, 2020

Business as (Un)Usual 2020 is turning out to be anything but "usual!" Our conference planning committee solicited feedback on this year's event format and received 129 responses to help inform our decision making. Based on what we heard, we are in the process of transitioning the conference to a virtual event, with creative approaches to keep you engaged and provide the knowledgesharing and networking opportunities you crave! Thank you for your patience as we work out the details. Sign up for our email list at wateredco. org/get-involved/newsletter to be sure not to miss any announcements, and keep checking back on the conference website for information coloradowater.org/scw-conference-2020.

Meet Samantha (Sami) Miller, WEco’s New Membership and Engagement Officer Sami joined the WEco team in late May and we are thrilled to have her on board! Sami will play a key role in expanding participation and financial support for programs, and increasing WEco’s visibility in the community. She will manage WEco’s membership program, ensuring that members are well supported and able to take advantage of their membership benefits, while also fostering new support.

Her role will also include marketing programs to diverse audiences and raising funds to improve access through scholarships and translation as we implement WEco’s recently adopted Equity Principles and improve our ability to serve all Coloradans, regardless of race, background or demographic.

In addition, Sami will work closely with sponsors to highlight their support for programs in meaningful ways as well as organizing fundraisers and other outreach events that enable WEco to continue to deliver on our mission. Welcome Sami!

Now going VIRTUAL in September!!

Fourteenth Annual

2020 President’s Reception Celebrating a More Water-Aware Colorado WEco Awards Banquet and Fundraiser Friday, September 18 / Six O’Clock in The comfort of your own home Or gather for a virtual watch party!

Join our livestream event to help us honor John Stulp, Former Special Policy Advisor to the Governor on Water Paul Bruchez, Reeder Creek Ranch and Outfitter

BUY TICKETS: www.watereducationcolorado.org/programs-events/presidents-reception General Admission & VIP tickets available this year.

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What we’re doing A conversation with…

ON TOUR

Urban Water Cycle Tour Goes Virtual The Urban Water Cycle Denver Tours, started by WEco nine years ago, continue virtually. Follow along with a video that incorporates footage of speakers and a simulated bike ride along Weir Gulch and the South Platte River from Barnum Park to Globeville Landing Park.

Then get out and ride! Participants will have access to a map and directions.

All who finish the tour and submit their contact information by August 31 will be eligible for prizes. The tour is open to the public and free. To participate visit watereducationcolorado.org.

WEco RADIO “We’ve got operations and maintenance needs. We’ve got expansion and capacity needs. We’ve got treatment needs. We’ve got all these different kinds of tentacles that need to be tended to and we can’t do it all at once.”

—Jonathan Harris, Carollo Engineers

Listen to the full episode by tuning into our radio series, Connecting the Drops, on Rocky Mountain Community Radio stations or on our website at watereducationcolorado.org.

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DAVID LAFRANCE

TIME ON THE WECO BOARD: Since January 2020 HOME: Littleton

David LaFrance is CEO of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and has been on the board of Water Education Colorado for less than a year. AWWA, a 51,000-member organization, has an international scope but is headquartered in Denver. The organization’s core values include protecting public health through safe drinking water, safeguarding the environment, sharing best practices, inspiring innovation and, importantly, fostering diversity and inclusion. As AWWA leads the water sector, they’ve done significant work around aging infrastructure. We caught up with David to hear about it.

What work has AWWA done that relates to aging water infrastructure?

First, AWWA is the only standards-writing organization for the water community. I know a lot of people don’t really know what that means but standards create great efficiency for any sector of the economy. Think of this, because we create standards for things like water pipes, you can pick up a pipe in Grand Junction and take it to Pueblo where it can connect to the pipes in Pueblo.

The idea that pipes, among other things, are made based on AWWA standards means a utility can count on new pipes fitting with old pipes and that is a huge boost in efficiency.

Second, around the year 2000, to recognize the immense challenge with the maintenance of existing and aging buried infrastructure, we published a report called “The Dawn of the Replacement Era” which foreshadowed that America’s aging buried infrastructure was going to need to be replaced. Then in 2012, we followed up on that warning with a publication called “Buried No Longer.” This study estimated replacing all the aging infrastructure throughout the country would cost $1 trillion from 2010 until 2035. That’s a huge number, but over time and with increased awareness and maybe some help from our elected leaders, I’m confident we will be able to maintain or repair all the infrastructure that needs it.

Third, we led the way for federal legislation that created a funding mechanism for water and wastewater infrastructure. The program is called WIFIA (Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act) and it provides long-term, low-cost supplemental assistance. The program was an ingenious way of alleviating much of the pressures associated with infrastructure replacement costs.

While water infrastructure is often overlooked, in part because we cannot see it, it truly is the backbone of our cities. Without water infrastructure, we would not have water in our homes or at our places of work, we would not have the ability to provide water to fire hydrants, and we wouldn’t have beautiful parks and recreation areas.

By Jacob Tucker Read the full interview on the blog at watereducationcolorado.org.

What we’re doing Introducing the Statewide Water Education Action Plan The Statewide Water Education Action Plan (SWEAP) is gaining momentum thanks to individuals and organizations like you! This spring, we have been meeting with a diversity of organizations around the state to understand the opportunities to advance SWEAP. Even in these difficult times, we see individuals and organizations eager and excited to work together towards this common vision. To be successful, the SWEAP effort needs your help to better understand the challenges and opportunities for implementing SWEAP around the state.

Get involved in bringing water education to every community in Colorado. Visit cowateredplan.org to learn more.

WATER EDUCATOR SYMPOSIUM

Equipping Learners for Action in a Climate of Uncertainty Join us on August 20 for the 2020 Water Educator Symposium, virtual this year.

Water educators consistently face questions from learners about Colorado’s water future and regularly need to put their educational activities in context despite underlying uncertainties. An issue such as climate change can increase the anxiety of all learners. How can we better understand the relationship between uncertainty, anxiety and action? How do we create a welcoming environment for civic participation in our decision-making bodies?

What tools exist inside the field of education to tackle this? Explore these questions and more with presentations, examples of educators who are tackling these issues, and a robust discussion of these challenges. Learn more and register at watereducationcolorado.org.

FROM THE EDITOR

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n recent months, communities with limited access to clean, affordable, running water have been hit hardest by the coronavirus. Take the Navajo Nation, where about a third of households haul water because they lack taps—and where the known COVID-19 infection rate has been higher than any other place in the country.

As the pandemic has taught us the life-or-death importance of access to clean water, it has also come with financial lessons that are yet to be fully realized. Colorado has received more than 588,000 unemployment claims. The weekly number of filed claims is declining, but how will Coloradans fare financially through the remainder of the pandemic? A recent investigation by the Guardian found that water affordability across the country is likely to become an increasing challenge and will continue to disproportionately impact low-income residents. The Guardian calls it a “growing water affordability crisis.”

Some say we’re facing an infrastructure crisis too. As Jason Plautz reports in “Nothing Lasts Forever” (page 13), some 95 percent of Colorado’s most valuable water infrastructure was built in or before the 1960s—it’s getting old, and repair and replacement is costly. While federal and state loans and grants have helped in the past, local governments provide 95 percent of funding for water and wastewater projects, according to a 2017 report from research firm RAND Corporation. Finding the money locally to support infrastructure repair and replacement could become more tenuous as rate increases put a heavier burden on individuals whose finances are stretched thin.

Many expect some federal relief to help meet water infrastructure challenges. “Our understanding is that there may be some [federal funding] coming one way or another in either stimulus bills or standalone infrastructure bills,” says Cynthia Koehler, executive director of the WaterNow Alliance, a national nonprofit that works with decision makers to champion a sustainable water future.

In Kelly Bastone’s “Building for Tomorrow” (page 23), read about efforts to build more sustainably and thoughtfully, to plan water systems based on data, and, as Koehler says, expand our definition of water infrastructure. “These systems that have always been considered somewhat separate from infrastructure actually are infrastructure,” Koehler says, referring to distributed infrastructure—a catch-all phrase she uses to refer to everything from stormwater capture and green infrastructure to turf replacement, low-flow toilets, smart irrigation timers, and more. WaterNow Alliance has been approached by federal policy makers, asking for recommendations as they draft possible infrastructure legislation, Koehler says. “This is really an opportunity … to ensure that any bill that provides funding for infrastructure is sure to include these distributed systems,” she says.

Water infrastructure has proven more essential than ever. The question of how we maintain, repair, and pay for it all is daunting. But the water community is creative and the future could look much different from the past.

—Editor—

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Pulse

Water Device Helps Eateries Cut Costs as They Rebuild

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BY JERD SMITH nside Denver’s high-end boutique steakhouse, Urban Farmer, the lights were off, the booths were empty, and it was quiet the week of June 1, the silence a result of the COVID-19 shutdown.

But toward the back in the gleaming LoDo kitchen, a low-level whisper rose from a small device that was circulating water in a plastic pan on the stainless steel prep counter, washing a frozen beef tenderloin continuously and allowing it to quickly defrost, using less than one-tenth of the water that the eatery once used to do the same work.

The Boss Defrost, as the device is known, is the work of former Urban Farmer executive chef Chris Starkus and engineer Mac Marsh, who developed the technology to help restaurants cut their water use, reduce their operating costs, and shrink their carbon footprint.

Just two years old, the “boss” is a welcome grace note in a restaurant scene that has been bludgeoned with weeks of closures.

When Urban Farmer was forced to close March 13, there was a dash to take its signature organic, locally sourced, high-end meat and place it in freezers in an attempt to save some of what was being lost, according to current executive chef Erick Gamas.

Now, since the eatery has opened at limited capacity, the small device has been running almost full-time, bringing choice cuts of meat back to life.

“It feels good to be able to do this,” Gamas says. “We talk a lot about taking care of Mother Earth in this restaurant. With this, we are not wasting water.”

Boss Defrost co-founder Marsh says he was inspired to create the thawing device after working as a hotel engineer and noticing, over and over again, how much fresh water was wasted every day.

Jerd Smith

Erick Gamas, executive chef at Urban Farmer Denver, was training staff to wear masks, gloves and do temperature checks as they prepared to reopen.

Designing and manufacturing this ultragreen commercial kitchen tool was almost a no-brainer.

“A single restaurant uses 1,000 gallons of water a day. It’s an unaddressed waste stream. But a lot of people don’t know this unless you’re working behind the scenes,” he says.

A normal defrosting process, where water from a tap is run over frozen food, uses 150 gallons an hour to thaw a pound of meat, Marsh says. The Boss Defrost reduces that to between 5 to 10 gallons per hour.

The Boss Defrost team believes the unit’s $300 price tag will encourage thousands of restaurants to see the benefits of the modest device. “That’s a drop in the bucket compared to most other costs restaurants see,” says Marsh.

Since its launch in 2019, the company has

sold hundreds of units across Colorado and in more than 14 states.

Denver-based Potager chef Nick Brand bought one almost the minute he saw it work.

“Everybody in our back-of-the-house team loves it,” Brand says. “They are on board.”

Diana Starkus, chief marketing officer at the startup, said the full impact of the technology won’t be seen until it has found a place in every school cafeteria, hamburger joint, and pizza parlor.

“I would drop a Boss Defrost in every one of those places today,” she says. H •

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This story originally appeared in Fresh Water News, an initiative of Water Education Colorado. Read Fresh Water News online at watereducationcolorado.org.

Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News.

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Pulse Chapter of Trout Unlimited says the program’s expansion will help water users keep water in rivers as communities face population growth and an unpredictable climate.

“The rivers here in Grand County are more de-watered by transbasin diversions than any other county in Colorado,” Klancke says. “Keeping water in the Fraser is half the battle of keeping the river healthy, and is becoming even more important as the effects of climate change loom. This new bill gives us more water that will stay in the river in low-flow years when it is needed. This bill gives more flexibility to existing instream flow water rights but, more importantly, makes it more inviting for other water rights owners to get involved in the instream [flow] loan program. With the growth of the program comes more security for the health of the heavily diverted Fraser River.”

Fishing and environmental flows on this stretch of the Cache la Poudre River, between Fort Collins and Greeley, will benefit from House Bill 1037, which clarifies that augmentation plans can be a tool to restore flows through the state’s Instream Flow Program.

New Laws Mean More Water for Environmental Flows

BY GUS JARVIS Two new pieces of legislation signed by Gov. Jared Polis in March 2020 will expand the ability and framework for water users to increase environmental flows in Colorado’s rivers during dry, low water years.

HOUSE BILL 1157 expands Colorado’s already-existing program for loaning water for environmental flows. Previously, a water user could loan a water right to the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) for instream flow use for three out of 10 years in a single 10-year period. This new legislation expands the program to five out of 10 years and the loan period can be extended for two more 10-year periods, giving water users more opportunity to provide instream flows for up to 15 out of 30 years.

“This legislation is very important,” says

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Colorado Parks and Wildlife regional water specialist David Graf. In 2012, Colorado Parks and Wildlife participated in the instream flow loan program to loan 18 cubic feet per second of water out of Big Beaver Reservoir to increase flows in the White River. “We looked pretty carefully at the hydrology, and the water we were able to release seemed to be really the only water in the river at that time. The fishery didn’t thrive but it didn’t die, and without that water it would have been damaged.”

The loan program has also been used on the Fraser River during drought years thanks to loaned water from the Winter Park Ranch Water and Sanitation District, along with many other loans in Colorado River headwaters tributaries. Kirk Klancke, former manager of the sanitation district and current president of the Colorado River Headwaters

HOUSE BILL 1037 authorizes the CWCB to use an acquired water right, whose historic consumptive use has been changed to include augmentation, to increase streamflows for environmental benefits.

Augmentation plans have long been used by irrigators to offset their water use when their rights aren’t in priority under Colorado’s water rights system.

Now, instream flows too can benefit from augmentation water without affecting senior water rights. House Bill 1037 is critical to a program being developed on the Cache la Poudre River to allow willing water rights owners to lease or sell their water to enhance return flows where the river can dry up in locations between Fort Collins and Greeley using the state’s Instream Flow Program. The new law clarifies that augmentation plans can be a tool for this program to utilize to restore flows.

“When we started putting together the water court application and through informal outreach, it became clear there were a bunch of questions about how an instream flow plan for augmentation would be operated,” says Kate Ryan, senior staff attorney for the Colorado Water Trust. “The legislation leaves less questions and gives more assurances that there will be no injury to other water users on the river.” H

Courtesy Colorado Water Trust

Fires Erupt in Midst of Risk-Reduction Planning

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BY GUS JARVIS he timing of this story is especially important right now,” Danny Margoles, coordinator of the Dolores Watershed Resilient Forest Collaborative (DWRFC), said on June 17 as numerous wildfires spread in southwestern Colorado, aided by hot, dry and windy conditions. “The big one is the East Canyon Fire, which is in our region and is burning on BLM [Bureau of Land Management] and private lands.

Some folks have been evacuated from their homes.”

As crews fight the fires, the DWRFC is facilitating a dialogue with the area’s stakeholders, including representatives from the timber industry, conservation groups, the U.S. Forest Service, business owners, and homeowners. The aim is to draft an overarching strategic plan by this fall to reduce wildfire risk on public and private lands within the group’s project area in Dolores and Montezuma counties.

Margoles says the forests in the upper Dolores River watershed have a history of fire suppression and clear cutting

that, along with climate change, has elevated wildfire risk. Now collaborating through online meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the group’s next meeting will include various maps for stakeholders to identify priority areas, including wildland urban interfaces and locations with potential for social erosion due to wildfire that might affect the Dolores River watershed and McPhee Reservoir, Margoles says.

“How to think across private and public boundaries is one of the larger goals. We are going to be drawing a lot of circles on the

Firefighter Jacob McGill of the White River Wildland Fire Module operates a drip torch on the Loading Pen Fire, one of the wildfires that has struck southwestern Colorado this season.

Courtesy Andy Lyon

maps together,” Margoles says.

“How do we reduce risk and help maintain resilient ecosystems and forests regardless of ownership boundaries? We are working to prioritize where the work should be done first.”

While the stakeholders working within the group agree on overarching goals, much of the hard work is yet to come as details and mitigation strategies come into focus, Margoles says.

As DWRFC moves forward in formulating its strategic plan, the group has already had an impact on residents with a program aimed to help them reduce wildfire risk by improving defensible space.

“With the East Canyon Fire, a good highlight is that one of our key partners has done a lot of work with one of the subdivisions that was evacuated. They helped improve their defensible space and are pretty well positioned,” Margoles says.

Even as the DWRFC works locally, the group is part of a larger, regional conversation within the San Juan Headwaters Forest Health Partnership (SJHFHP). That partnership is bringing stakeholders together to identify community risks and needs, then planning projects to address them within the Pagosa Ranger District of the San Juan National Forest.

“We are trying to look at present threats, future threats and what it’s going to take to keep our community sustainable and resilient,” says SJHFHP coordinator Aaron Kimple. “There are things we need to focus on locally but what working together [with the DWRFC] has offered us is the ability to expand and get resources on a larger scale.” H

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Around the state | BY JERD SMITH ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Pueblo-based Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District have signed a project charter, a sort of work plan, for construction of the Arkansas Valley Condit, according to the Pueblo Chieftain. The conduit was awarded $28 million in federal funding earlier this year and the signing of the work plan signals another step forward for the project, which is designed to help provide clean water in the Lower Arkansas Valley.

COLORADO RIVER BASIN In a new survey, voters said they would back an increase in property taxes to help support the Colorado River District in Glenwood Springs. District officials, who have seen a decline in property tax revenues, said they will make a final decision about whether to put the proposed tax increase on the ballot later this summer, according to Aspen Journalism.

GUNNISON RIVER BASIN Colorado Parks and Wildlife experts, after decades of work, have been able to restore significant populations of rainbow trout, thanks in part to a breeding program that centers on the Gunnison River, according to the Colorado Sun. The Gunnison trout have been bred to be both disease resistant and super-rugged, tough enough to survive against non-native species.

NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN Colorado has slipped into another major dry spell, with Gov. Jared Polis activating the state’s drought task force in June. More than 80 percent of the state is experiencing extreme or severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. But it’s not everywhere. At least not yet. As of June 29, Jackson County was one of just three across the state that remained drought free, with Boulder and Larimer counties rounding out the trio.

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Percent of Colorado in drought (D0: Abnormally dry to D4: Exceptional drought)

June 23, 2020

82.79 %

June 25, 2019

0%

June 26, 2018

78.67 %

June 20, 2017

5.89 %

June 28, 2016

5.24 %

June 23, 2015

25.78 %

RIO GRANDE RIVER BASIN State Rep. Valdez introduced a bill early in this year’s legislative session that sought special protection for the Rio Grande Basin against outside efforts to export its water to the Front Range. But Valdez ultimately withdrew the bill, which had drawn widespread concern from Front Range and Western Slope water interests, among others.

water under an innovative $171 million deal completed in May between the state, water providers, environmental groups and the federal government, according to Fresh Water News. The reservoir, once designed strictly for flood protection, will transform into a much-needed storage vessel for nine water providers, towns, and agencies. Thanks to the redesign, the reservoir will be able to hold an additional 20,600 acre-feet of water, while maintaining its ability to protect the metro area from flooding.

SAN JUAN/DOLORES RIVER BASIN The Animas River opened to recreation over Memorial Day and has seen a surge in activity as residents learned that they could access the river after weeks of a regional closure, according to the Durango Herald.

Several guides working out of Durango said they’re hopeful they will be able to recoup thousands of dollars in booking lost during the shutdown.

SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN Chatfield Reservoir, one of the largest liquid playgrounds in the Denver metro area, will take on a new role this year, storing

YAMPA RIVER BASIN The Yampa River Fund, a nonprofit created in 2019 and funded by The Nature Conservancy, among others, issued its first round of grants in May. It gave $200,000 to five projects including $45,000 to the Colorado Water Trust for environmental releases from Stagecoach Reservoir; $30,353 to the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council’s reforestation project; $44,821 to the town of Oak Creek for reforestation efforts along Oak Creek; $35,000 to Trout Unlimited for restoration work below Elkhead Reservoir; and $44,821 to Moffat County to improve a boat ramp and stabilize banks on the Yampa River.

Source: U.S. Drought Monitor | droughtmonitor.unl.edu

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER

AS AGE TAKES ITS TOLL, COLORADO WORKS AROUND THE CLOCK TO KEEP ITS WATER INFRASTRUCTURE IN GOOD WORKING ORDER

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s anyone who’s heard a politician or engineer speak knows, the nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. While pothole-ridden roads and shaky bridges often capture the headlines, water infrastructure, though often hidden underground, is no exception. From dams to pipelines, critical water infrastructure that dates decades— sometimes more than a century—old is reaching the end of its useful life.

Every year, the American Water Works Association (AWWA) surveys water professionals, including utility managers, consultants,

academics and scientists. In every year since the survey began in 2004, up to 2020, respondents listed “renewal and replacement of aging water and wastewater infrastructure" as the industry’s top challenge.

“The contaminant concerns flash brightly in the headlines, but what keeps most utility managers up at night is how they’re going to maintain and repair their infrastructure,” says Greg Kail, a spokesman for AWWA. Even in the West, where cities were built more recently, age and a lack of routine maintenance mean that many utilities are

grappling with the prospect of failing pipes, dams and ditches.

In its 2020 report card released in January, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave Colorado’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure a “C-,” while dams were graded “C+.” The report estimates that it will take $10.2 billion over the next 20 years to maintain and upgrade the state’s drinking water infrastructure, and another $4.7 billion for wastewater.

That’s a notch better than the national marks; ASCE’s 2017 national report card

BY JA SON P LAU TZ Matthew Staver

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SOME CITIES STILL RELY ON WOODEN PIPES—ONE LINE UNDER DENVER’S WELTON STREET DATES BACK TO 1881. BREAKS THERE CAN CAUSE DISRUPTIVE SPILLS OR ALLOW INFILTRATION OF CHEMICALS INTO DRINKING WATER.

gave the country’s drinking water a “D” and wastewater a “D+.” But, says Jonathan Harris, a co-author on the Colorado report, that shouldn’t be much consolation.

“We’re really on the lower end of mediocre,” says Harris, an associate resident engineer at Carollo Engineers in Denver. “We’ve got age and maintenance working hand in hand. With the utilities that don’t have the time or the money to maintain and work on their systems, age starts to play a large role in a short amount of time.”

Compared to its neighbors, the cost to repair Colorado’s infrastructure is second only to that of Utah, Harris says, making it one of the Western states with the highest risk.

It’s a problem up and down systems: from dams and reservoirs that may be slowly deteriorating, to pipelines with corroded and pockmarked linings that could leak valuable water, and treatment systems that require upgrades to keep up with evolving water quality regulations. Effects range from tiny leaks to the leaching of contaminants like lead into drinking water. At worst, a catastrophic dam failure could cause significant loss of life, while drinking water failures could shut down water systems entirely, leaving residents without clean tap water.

As climate change fuels heat waves, more intense storms, and droughts that will lead to water shortage, systems built before climate change was even a consideration will be put to the test.

Already utilities are adjusting budgets to shore up their dams and treatment plants.

But as infrastructure costs rise, utilities aren’t always able to keep up without raising rates for their customers. Most fund their capital projects through a mix of revenue from utility bills and federal and state grants and loans. The latter sources, however, are increasingly oversubscribed as needs rise across the state; according to the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority (CWRPDA), which provides water project financing through the State Revolving Funds and a loan and bond program, requests for funding have been doubling every five years.

Still, new technology and management practices and access to capital means the water industry is optimistic. When asked to rate the current health of the water system, respondents to the 2020 AWWA survey reported a record-high rating (the survey was taken before the COVID-19 pandemic).

Still, that doesn't mean the infrastructure concerns are going away anytime soon.

“I hear people call this an infrastructure crisis and I disagree with that,” says Frank Blaha, senior research manager at the Water Research Foundation (WRF) in Denver. “A crisis is an unusual situation that you get over. What utilities are dealing with is a new way of life.”

THE PROBLEM BENEATH THE STREETS

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he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has pegged the nation’s public water system needs at $472.6 billion over the next 20 years, more than 10 times what the agency has doled out to states over the past two decades through its Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. AWWA projects an even greater need—its 2012 Buried No Longer report estimated that repairing and expanding drinking water systems alone would total at least $1 trillion over the next 25 years.

In Colorado, much of the state’s most valuable water infrastructure could qualify for senior citizen status. Some 95 percent of the state’s water storage was constructed before 1960.

The Colorado-Big Thompson Project (C-BT), the state’s largest transbasin diversion that moves an average of 220,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River headwaters to the northern Front Range each year, was completed in 1957. More than 60 years old now, the C-BT’s infrastructure is being assessed by Northern Water and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, with certain at-risk structures already identified to be repaired or replaced.

The Grand Valley Project that diverts on average 662,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water each year to irrigate farms and operate the Grand Valley Power Plant in western Colorado dates back to the 1910s. Two turbines in the project’s power plant are at the end of their useful lives.

But experts say the worst problems are less flashy. The basic pipelines that form the skeleton of a utility can be the oldest parts of any water system. Some cities still rely on wooden pipes— one line under Denver’s Welton Street dates back to 1881. Breaks there can cause disruptive spills or allow infiltration of chemicals into drinking water.

“This is our biggest area of focus,” says Harris.

“In existing developments in downtowns, it’s not easy or cost efficient to access those [pipes], and it’s difficult to maintain them.”

AWWA recommends an industry best practice

PRECEDING PAGE: Bill McCormick, chief of the Colorado Division of Water Resources (DWR) Dam Safety Branch, and Jim Kirch, dam safety engineer, with DWR measure seepage and inspect Hyatt Dam in Arvada. Constructed in 1863, Hyatt is on DWR’s 2020 list of 25 high-hazard dams eligible for FEMA rehabilitation grant funding. Until the dam is improved, reservoir storage is restricted to protect downstream residents who would be at risk if a breach occurred.

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of aiming for no more than 15 breaks per 100 miles of distribution per year. Because leaks and breaks may be defined differently across utilities, it's hard to gauge whether that standard is being met. A review of surveys that Blaha presented at the 2017 ASCE Pipelines Conference found that utilities were reporting between 20 and 30 breaks per 100 miles each year. A 2018 report from Utah State University’s Buried Structures Laboratory, based on a survey of 281 utilities that provided data on nearly 200,000 miles of pipes, found that break rates had increased 27 percent between 2012 and 2018, with an average of 14 breaks per 100 miles of pipe each year in the United States and Canada.

Disruptions due to breaks, the USU report said, “are now a common occurrence.” While conditions vary across cities, the study found that older cast iron and asbestos-lined pipes tend to be in bad shape. Main breaks can be a problem anywhere, especially when they disrupt service for a significant amount of time, but are especially a risk for smaller utilities, which don’t have the engineering staff to jump on repairs.

Most water main breaks are relatively small and easy to fix, with customers barely noticing. But occasionally, in the kind of scenario that keeps water providers up at night, they are severe enough to allow contamination of drinking water with bacteria. Or customers may see taps go dry. In February 2019, a pipe near the North Fork of the Gunnison River burst when water storage was at its lowest point of the year, leaving 1,600 water customers in Paonia without running water for a total of 13 days.

MONITORING THE PIPES

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tility managers pride themselves on keeping water out of the headlines, but that comes with drawbacks.

“You acutely feel the failures of transportation infrastructure, whereas the impacts of a water main break are pretty localized and folks outside of that area don’t really see it,” says Scott Berry, director of policy and government affairs for the U.S. Water Alliance, a national nonprofit advocating for sustainable water infrastructure. “Increasingly water has been a part of the infrastructure conversation, but that’s taken some work.”

Aggressive maintenance would mean raising rates that had been kept deliberately low and stretching capital budgets. Underground infrastructure is also hard to regularly monitor and repair, and inspecting large pipelines can require shutting them down for hours.

Federal funding hasn’t offered much relief, even as tougher drinking water and wastewater standards

iStock

An agricultural ditch in Palisade supplies peach orchards with irrigation water, not far from the Grand Valley Power Plant.

Ag Feels Infrastructure’s Age Too For the growers in Colorado’s $40 billion agriculture industry, every last drop of water counts. But deteriorating ditches, diversions and reservoirs mean some of that precious water may never reach the crops.

It’s something that Max Schmidt, manager of the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District in the Grand Valley, knows all too well. The district sends Colorado River water to 9,219 acres of land, including roughly 2,500 acres for peach growers, 1,000 acres for vineyards and another 3,000 acres of pasture land (the district also serves some suburban users). The district was organized in 1904 and was partially integrated into the federal government’s Grand Valley Project in 1922, with some of its key infrastructure dating back just that long.

“Our canals have operated on a shoestring budget for 100 years and now we’re paying the price,” Schmidt says. “For the last 100 years, we’ve delivered cheap, abundant water, and now there’s a lot that needs to be done.”

The Grand Valley Power Plant hydroelectric facility is almost 90 years old and Schmidt is just about ready to fully replace it (an $8 million project he’s cobbled together with grants and loans from the federal and state government, as well as private funding). The pump house was overhauled in the 1980s. But one of the biggest headaches for users is the network’s 30 miles of canals, which are so deteriorated in some spots that water just vanishes into the soil.

Lining the canals to reduce leaks or replacing stretches with pipe has been slow going. Schmidt jokes that it takes “TLC: time labor and cash,” but all are in short supply. With help from the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, the district revamped enough canals and storage to save 10,000 acre-feet of water per year. But the rest of the canals, he says, will have to wait until more money is available, and some of his agriculture users are still dealing with water losses.

For districts that can’t access the same cash, growers and farmers are left paying the price in inefficient irrigation. A 2019 survey for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and Partners for Western Conservation that polled more than 330 agriculture producers found the condition of water delivery infrastructure was the second most-cited concern, with 55 percent of respondents noting it.

“These problems are not dissimilar to the problems of cities,” says Greg Peterson, executive director of the Colorado Ag Water Alliance. “Every little thing makes your business less efficient and less profitable.” H

BY JASON PLAUTZ

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Kent Cooper, Pueblo Water’s GIS developer, looks at Pueblo Water’s system map alongside a map of water main breaks throughout the city where he can access information about specific breaks including location, date of the occurrence and repair, surface material, and more.

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have required utilities to spend more to get their equipment up to par. The Flint water crisis, which has been unfolding over the past five years, has also added pressure to cities to replace lead pipes, like Denver’s $500 million plan to replace lead service lines to between 64,000 and 84,000 homes over the next 15 years.

“Utility management has gotten significantly more complex in the past few decades. Some small communities just don’t know what to look for, through no fault of their own,” says Leanne Miller, a senior engineer at Carollo Engineers who works with communities on Colorado’s Western Slope.

“And to be frank, some communities are just waiting for a disaster.”

Even the more proactive utilities are running behind. Theresa Connor, deputy director of Fort Collins Utilities says it “kind of feels like we’re running through quicksand” when maintaining the city’s more than 500 miles of water distribution and 450 miles of wastewater lines, some of which date back to 1883. The city has a record going back to the 1980s of every break, and every pipe, along with its material type, has been logged at installation since the 1950s. The record is also being modernized with GIS mapping to get a better sense of how best to target repairs.

Even with that level of foresight, Connor admits that the city is behind its renewal goals. Fort Collins has a goal of replacing its entire system every

100 years, but isn't on track to do so for 250 years.

A 10-year strategic plan, which will gradually raise rates to fund more aggressive repairs, should help the city get closer to the goal of replacing 1 percent of its infrastructure every year, but even that, Connor says, will require a surge.

Part of the problem for utility managers is that knowing infrastructure’s age isn’t enough. Older doesn’t always mean worse, and pipes installed during the Vietnam War may need to be swapped out before infrastructure dating back to World War I. Certain soil can be more corrosive, and differences in use and pressure can mean some pipes break down before others. Before the 1920s, cast iron pipe typically had a thicker wall that was less efficient to produce, but has made it more durable in the long run.

“Some of this pipe has been in the ground for 100 years and it looks brand new. Some it is more recent and it’s falling apart,” says WRF’s Blaha. "It’s all about the conditions it’s been subjected to.”

For example, a water main break in Pueblo over the July 4 weekend in summer 2019 flooded downtown streets with water and debris. When the deluge was captured on cell phone cameras, it became a crystallizing moment for many citizens around the risks posed by their aging water system.

The irony is that the flood wasn’t due to an outof-date pipe. Instead, it was a flaw in a 5-year-old piece of equipment. In fact, Pueblo has cast iron Courtesy Pueblo Water

pipes that date back to the late 1800s that are still in good working order. Pueblo Water director of operations Matt Trujillo said most of Pueblo Water’s repairs are on thinner-walled cast iron pipes installed in the 1950s and 1960s on the north side of town, where the soil is more corrosive.

To keep track of what infrastructure needs to be replaced and when, Pueblo has recorded all of its main breaks since 1972, which are plotted in GIS along with information about the soil, the type of pipe, and when it was originally installed. Trujillo says that means Pueblo isn’t just fixing breaks—it is spotting trends.

“We’re pretty certain that once you see breaks in the same area, with the same material, you’ll see that problem propagate itself,” Trujillo says. “Our approach is a little more proactive.”

Not every utility has that level of data and analysis, which makes infrastructure seem like a much bigger crisis than it actually is, Blaha says. If the assumption is that every pipe that’s more than a few decades old needs to be replaced, utilities face a daunting challenge—and perhaps an inflated one.

Blaha has worked with utilities to help them gather data like Pueblo has that helps inform where and why breaks are happening. When reviewing case studies for a typical utility, WRF has found that typically less than 10 percent of a utility’s pipe is deteriorated enough to require replacement.

“What you want to do is identify the riskiest pipes that really do need attention, the 10 percent of the pipes that cause 80 percent of your problems,” Blaha says. “There’s so much capital involved that you have to focus on what’s deteriorated, because nobody has the time or the money to focus on everything else.”

To hone in on risk, utilities are especially focused on prestressed concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP), a large-diameter pipe popular in the late 20th century. With a high volume running through them, PCCP failures tend to hemorrhage water and mean that a critical element in the system is lost, requiring costly and time-consuming repairs.

Those failures are becoming more frequent.

However, some cities don’t know how much PCCP is under the streets, or don’t have a reliable inventory of any type of pipe. That makes it nearly impossible for them to track what's at risk.

Steve Simon, who worked as principal engineer and infrastructure planner for Aurora Water from 2014 through April 2020, when he moved on to work for the City of Englewood, knew he had to monitor the four miles of PCCP that Aurora installed between 1979 and 1981, but wanted something better than annual inspections that only capture conditions at that moment. Even draining the pipe to manually inspect it, he says, “puts stress on the system.”

Courtesy Aurora Water

In 2019, the utility installed an acoustic monitoring system, which can “hear” when pipe is in trouble. PCCP is lined with high-tension wires that audibly snap as breaks occur. Xylem’s Pure Technologies SoundPrint system records the location of the break and alerts Simon of the break activity, so he can identify when and where breaks occur and stay ahead of system failure. Despite the high up-front cost of the monitoring system, Simon says that being ahead of the curve on maintenance — for example, seeing if one section of pipe is experiencing more stress — should help avoid costlier repairs down the road.

It’s just one of many new tools that has brought a high-tech approach to old infrastructure. Xylem has also worked with utilities throughout Colorado on advanced inspections that don’t require shutting down pipelines. The company’s “smart ball” — a softball-sized tool loaded with sensors — can run through pipes as water is flowing, listening for the tell-tale hissing sound that flags a leak. The ball reports where potential problems exist, helping target limited repair budgets. Xylem also offers a flexible PipeDiver robot that scans pipe walls for corrosion.

“We can’t look at this $1 trillion problem

In 2019, Aurora Water installed an acoustic monitoring system which “listens” for the tell-tale snapping sound of wires breaking in prestressed concrete cylinder pipes (PCCP). The technology sends data back to the utility, alerting water managers so they can prevent system failure.

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Walsenburg’s rebuilt City Lake Dam was only partially full in October 2019. The new Walsenburg Reservoir has been in use since December 2019 and can now be filled to its legally decreed storage level of 416 acre-feet— as of mid-June 2020 it held around 405 acre-feet. Still there’s room to spare with the reservoir’s maximum storage level built to 686 acre-feet.

through the lens of ‘all the old stuff needs to be replaced,’” says Allison Stroebele, Xylem’s regional vice president overseeing Western states. “They have to do it in a way that’s affordable. Fixing all the pipes would make water unaffordable.”

WHEN AGING INFRASTRUCTURE MEETS STORAGE NEEDS

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s the state looks to expand its water storage capacity—a goal in the Colorado Water Plan (CWP)—there’s an increasing focus on dams and reservoirs. The 2019 Technical Update to the water plan projects a gap of anywhere from 250,000 to 750,000 acre-feet between municipal and industrial water supply and demand by 2050, but also acknowledges that the state’s existing water supply system is not in prime condition.

According to ASCE, the average dam in Colorado is approximately 74 years old, meaning they were built without modern safety standards and in vastly different demographic conditions. Known construction on dams started in the 1860s and peaked in the 1960s, with a sharp decline in new construction since the 1990s.

The Colorado Division of Water Resources (DWR) does regular inspections on the state’s 1,800 non-federal dams (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation oversees another 60 dams in the state), helping spot embankment and structural deterioration issues before they become a problem. In cases where there could be a serious hazard, like

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structural flaws that could lead to a dam break, the state will impose storage restrictions, reducing the amount of water the reservoir can hold until the structure is deemed safe.

According to Bill McCormick, chief of DWR’s dam safety branch, around 130 dams in Colorado are typically under those restrictions at any given time.

Often the needed fixes are relatively easy, a matter of updating technology or shoring up cracked concrete. Other times, there’s a more substantive overhaul required. Take, for example, the Walsenburg City Lake Dam. After more than a century of use, its problems ranged from seepage to an outdated design to cattails growing up through the dam’s concrete, says Mark Perry, a DWR safety engineer in the Pueblo office.

DWR put the dam under a compliance plan, with a list of potential steps for the city to overhaul the site. Rather than make incremental improvements, Walsenburg elected to effectively build a new, modern dam to replace the existing one (funded by $10 million in loans and grants from the Colorado Water Conservation Board).

That, says Perry, isn’t typical, but shows that even the oldest dams can be brought up to modern standards with new technology and design practices. But complete overhaul can be the best option for truly outdated infrastructure. As a bonus, it allowed Walsenburg to expand its storage capacity; it’s a model, Perry says, of how dam repair can be an active part of the state's water plan and address storage and safety at the same time.

But hazard isn’t just about the state of a Courtesy RJH Consultants

dam—surroundings matter too. Many dams were built when Colorado’s population was sparser.

Now, new developments have sprung up at their feet, making a potential failure all the riskier. In addition to evaluating the status of dams, the state also classifies them by their hazard risk based on the nearby population. According to McCormick, more than 400 dams are considered “high hazard.”

Recent increases in that number are largely due to "hazard creep," a term referring to the increased consequences of dam failure due to development around a reservoir or dam.

“If a high-hazard dam were to fail, there is the potential for the loss of life,” McCormick says. "We manage that risk by working on reducing the likelihood of failure.” Restrictions on high-hazard dams are meant to protect against dam failure and save lives. These dams are subject to more stringent design standards, more frequent inspections, and managers must develop emergency action plans that would guide the evacuation of downstream residents should failure occur.

PRICEY REPLACEMENTS AND REPAIRS, WHO PAYS?

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hese repairs take money, which means utilities face a future where water is no longer as cheap as it has been. According to the 2020 AWWA survey, rate increases were the top funding source for utilities, with 25 percent of respondents listing it as a way to cover needs.

While utilities try to make increases tenable for all customers, they will inevitably hit low-income consumers hardest — especially if there’s a steep rise in a single year.

According to the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, wastewater rates have risen faster than inflation since 2002. Fourteen million people, or 12 percent of households, pay unaffordable rates, defined by the EPA as more than 4.5 percent of a region’s median household income. According to a 2018 study from Michigan State University (MSU), over the next five years that percentage could rise to nearly 36 percent of households.

So far, Colorado utilities have avoided massive price shocks thanks to relatively new infrastructure, conscious rate setting, and conservation that reduces overall use. Still, the MSU study says there are a handful of “high risk” tracts where the median income is less than $32,000 and a rate jump would disproportionately affect ratepayers, including Denver, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Alamosa.

Capital costs also aren’t getting cheaper. In fact, limited construction crews and higher building

costs mean the price tags of some projects have doubled since they were first proposed, says Keith McLaughlin, executive director of CWRPDA, a state-run financing resource for water and wastewater utilities.

Many utilities are gradually doling out rate increases to ease the potential shock, or are exploring solutions like income-based billing that would not disproportionately affect the poorest consumers. But what about smaller systems that have lost population or can’t shoulder skyrocketing capital costs?

Take the Town of Peetz, which sits just south of the Nebraska border near Sterling. State inspectors say the town’s wastewater storage lagoon, constructed in the 1960s with an old clay liner, has been leaking, contaminating groundwater.

Peetz has known about the leak for more than 10 years and has been working on a solution, but installing new wastewater lagoons will cost around $2.9 million. With a population of just 233 people, the money can’t be raised through rates alone.

“There’s just no way to raise those kinds of funds,” says Amy Sorensen, a consultant for Peetz’s new wastewater facility. “All of our rate estimates are based on 115 users who are paying rates,” Sorensen says. “You can’t raise a lot of money when you’re sending out 115 bills every month.”

For those kinds of large capital projects, the federal government offers funds through EPA’s State Revolving Funds, which allows states to offer low-interest loans for large projects. Colorado nets about $20 million for drinking water and $12 million for wastewater each year from the SRF, which CWRPDA distributes. The payments are made as loans, with repaid money distributed anew.

CWRPDA is offering Peetz $700,000 in loans — though the town hopes to only need $400,000 of that — plus another $185,000 in grants. But some $2 million more has to be pieced together from other sources — the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural development fund is contributing another $670,000 in grants and loans and the project is also getting money from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs. It’s indicative, McLaughlin says, of how all communities, but especially those that are economically strapped, have to approach massive infrastructure project financing.

“With these systems that often are not seeing growth, it’s tough to meet these demand costs,” McLaughlin says. “It’s a struggle to meet existing regulations and build for future demand.”

Peetz hopes to have its new evaporative lagoons constructed so it can discontinue use of the existing, leaking lagoon by summer 2021, but it hasn’t been easy, Sorensen says. “These town boards are stuck with the burden to do these projects but they can’t get people to be on the boards or to

ACCORDING TO THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CLEAN WATER AGENCIES, WASTEWATER RATES HAVE RISEN FASTER THAN INFLATION SINCE 2002. FOURTEEN MILLION PEOPLE, OR 12 PERCENT OF HOUSEHOLDS, PAY UNAFFORDABLE RATES.

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In northeastern Colorado’s Town of Peetz, three women—(left to right) Mayor Traci Davenport; Amy Sorensen, wastewater project manager; and Evelyn Gardiner, town clerk—who have worked tirelessly to secure funding and permits to build new wastewater evaporation lagoons for the town, stand in a former cornfield, where the future lagoons will be located.

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participate in city government,” she says. At the same time, often people who are on local water boards are retired, or don’t have experience applying for grants, let alone managing a $2.9 million project. “Even though they’re small towns, they still need the same kind of reporting and licensing on their water,” Sorensen says. “People have no idea. There’s just a lot.”

Then there’s the cost to residents. Even with the mix of funding that Peetz was able to secure, the town will have to raise sewer rates from around $50 per month today to $55 by the time construction begins, assuming they’re able to keep costs within budget, Sorensen says.

According to a 2017 report from the research firm RAND Corporation, local governments provide 95 percent of funding for drinking water, sewer and wastewater infrastructure, but federal programs can catalyze expensive capital projects.

EPA’s revolving funds have kept the nation’s infrastructure in a usable state. The agency’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund was created in 1987 and has distributed $138 billion through 2019; a separate Drinking Water State Revolving Fund was established in 1996 and has provided $38.2 billion.

But those funds are now notoriously oversubscribed; between 2017 and 2018, requests increased 25 percent, according to a report from

Bluefield Research. Low federal interest rates amid COVID-19 also mean the state’s revolving funds are bringing in less money in repayments, making it harder to lend even as more projects seek aid.

Passage of the federal Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) in 2014 offered a new funding source. The low-interest loan program is separate from the state revolving funds and targets large projects (more than $20 million for large communities and $5 million for communities of 25,000 or less), offering up to 49 percent of project costs. Through 2019, the project has offered 14 loans for $3.5 billion in financing. No Colorado project has cashed in yet, however the Town of Eagle submitted a request in 2017 to finance the first phase of a new water treatment plant. The Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART (Sustain and Manage America's Resources for Tomorrow) has also emerged as a key source of federal funding for efficiency measures and storage projects.

As both the White House and Congress have pitched infrastructure as part of the COVID-19 recovery, it’s not clear what role water would play in a funding package compared to other infrastructure. According to a report from the U.S. Water Alliance, the federal government funds just 9 percent of total water spending, compared to the 63 percent it backed 40 years ago, while the share for transportation infrastructure has stayed constant, at about 50 percent of total capital spending.

House Democrats proposed a $760 billion infrastructure package in January that would include $50.5 billion for clean water and $25.4 billion for drinking water, including new cash for the EPA’s revolving funds and would lower eligibility requirements for small communities to get funding. President Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure proposal in his fiscal year 2021 budget released in February 2020 also earmarked money for water infrastructure, although the overall budget would cut EPA’s revolving funds, and some money for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that goes to dams and other large water projects.

In the meantime, it’s up to local utilities to take the lead and make sure their systems can deliver water to the people who need it, says AWWA’s Kail.

“If we hope that someday there’s some sort of federal silver bullet, history tells us that’s unlikely,” Kail says. “What we need is utilities that can build support and help people understand their water systems. Any system that doesn’t operate efficiently, even for a day, has a huge impact on its community.” H Jason Plautz is a journalist based in Denver specializing in environmental policy. His writing has appeared in High Country News, Reveal, HuffPost, National Journal, and Undark, among other outlets.

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PERMITTING SOLUTIONS FOR AN AGING INFRASTRUCTURE By: Lucy Harrington and Chloe Lewis

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PHASING OUT OLD INFRASTRUCTURE CREATES OPPORTUNITIES FOR COLORADANS TO ENVISION FUTURISTIC WAYS OF MOVING, MANAGING AND TREATING WATER

As part of its North System Renewal project, Denver Water’s Conduit 16, a pipeline originally completed in 1937 to convey water the 8.5 miles from Ralston Reservoir to the Moffat Treatment Plant, is being replaced.

In 1937, teams of men swung their pickaxes into the Colorado sod just north of Golden to build Ralston Dam and bury veins of pipe that would carry water south toward the fledgling city of Denver. That growing community had just constructed its City and County Building in 1932, and, by 1934, boasted a symphony orchestra. Civilization was sprouting, and with the Ralston Creek project, the Denver Board of Water Commissioners apparently wanted to make a grand contribution to the city’s future. Maybe they sensed that they, like the ancient Romans, would be forever judged by the quality of their works. They built Ralston Dam and its network of valves and pipes to serve many generations of Coloradans—and, 80 years later, they’re still in service.

These days, suburbanites steer air-conditioned SUVs between the shopping centers and drive-throughs that have replaced the farmlands adjacent to the city center where workers buried pipe throughout the 1930s. And that infrastructure is finally showing its age. Cracking pipes are leaking water, and the utility is forecasting even bigger breakdowns ahead. The Moffat Treatment Plant, which was a cutting-edge facility when it was originally built, east of Ralston Dam, is now hemmed in by nearby housing and, with no room to expand, can’t keep pace with modern expectations.

Today’s residents and water providers grapple with issues that Denver’s settlers never could have envisioned. Climate change has intensified weather events and increased the frequency and severity of wildfires and flash floods—which can dramatically impact watersheds and the communities that depend on them. (In September 2013, record rainfall turned Ralston Creek into a firehose that eroded infill channels and destroyed water monitoring equipment at Ralston Reservoir.) New contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals and perfluorinated compounds, are infiltrating water supplies. And with human populations growing in Colorado and across the West—the 2019 Technical Update to the Colorado Water Plan projects that the state’s population could grow from around 5.4 million people in 2015 to between 7.6 and 9.3 million by 2050—we’ve become savvier about the importance of conserving water and other natural resources that seemed inexhaustible just 100 years ago. We’ve also witnessed development’s negative environmental consequences, and are prioritizing less impactful systems.

To address 21st-century concerns, Denver Water initiated a $600 million overhaul of its North System, which includes Ralston Reservoir

BY KELLY BASTONE Courtesy Denver Water

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HAVING THE DATA, THERE’S NO SPECULATION WITH COST FORECASTS. WE KNOW THAT IN 10 YEARS, SAY, WE’LL NEED A MILLION DOLLARS, AND WE’LL KNOW EXACTLY FOR WHAT. • JULIE KOEHLER / CITY OF WESTMINSTER

and the Moffat Treatment Plant, which is Denver’s oldest. That plant will be repurposed into a water distribution center where water will be stored and eventually sent out to customers, while a new Northwater Treatment Plant will feature sustainable, energy-efficient systems with extra-deep filter beds capable of extracting today’s contaminants—all while producing some 75 million gallons of treated water daily. The project’s first phase began in 2017, when new pipeline was laid to replace the old. Completion is scheduled for 2024.

The North System Renewal ranks as Colorado’s most ambitious water infrastructure development at present, in price and scope, according to Denver Water, but it’s far from the only project to attempt next-gen solutions. All across the state, water providers, developers, farmers and consultants are taking visionary approaches to maintaining yesterday’s water infrastructure and upgrading it for tomorrow. Some solutions emphasize efficiency, while others prioritize human and environmental health. What they all have in common—from the smallest pilot project to the largest, $600-million overhaul—is multi-dimensionality. Water infrastructure must now serve many masters.

HARNESSING DATA’S POWER The City of Westminster is a 113,000-resident suburb located eight miles north of Denver. Ten years ago, its water utility handled infrastructure upgrades and maintenance requests as most municipalities do: It doled out money as needs arose. That meant Westminster was constantly reacting to past problems rather than steering its future.

“As a utility, we do not have a savings account,” explains Julie Koehler, Westminster’s utility engineering manager. Instead, ratepayers contribute though their monthly bills, based on their usage and meter size, to the city’s enterprise fund for infrastructure needs—but system crises always seemed to deplete that fund, leaving nothing for future planning. So in 2010, Westminster inventoried its water infrastructure systems and created a database that now dictates what rates must be to accomplish the city’s present and future goals. The database also determines when money will be spent, and on what.

“What this database allows us to do is very strategically plan for the repair or replacement of different parts in the utility, because we know what year each part was installed, and what year the industry deems that part to be at the end of its life,” explains Koehler. That database also helps the City of Westminster plan for future water quality regulations, or new processes like monitoring for specific 24 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

Julie Koehler, utility engineering manager for the City of Westminster, relies on the city’s database to plan the repair and replacement of Westminster’s water infrastructure.

contaminants that could be coming down the pike, Koehler says.

That kind of data-tracking system may seem simple, but it has effectively revolutionized Westminster’s ability to maintain, upgrade, and build water infrastructure. “Having the data, there’s no speculation with cost forecasts,” Koehler says. “We know that in 10 years, say, we’ll need a million dollars, and we’ll know exactly for what.”

Thus Westminster uses the database to plan its rates and fees.

That transparency has made it popular with the city’s engineers.

“There’s no longer any infighting between the water, pipeline and wastewater factions, who used to argue over who was taking all the money,” explains Koehler. “Now, everyone’s needs are tracked, so it’s clear where the money’s going.” Of course, no ratepayer wants her bills to increase, and some Westminster residents objected to rate hikes.

However, says Koehler, “Knowing what we need and how to plan for it has allowed us to be more forward-thinking.” Westminster is currently in the process-selection phase of planning for a new water treatment plant. Patching together the old facility wasn’t a safe or reliable option: Its concrete, pumps, and chemical feed systems are all failing, says Koehler. Besides, she adds, the new facility will address

new water quality issues that people couldn’t have imagined in the 1960s, when the existing plant was built. Explosions of certain plant and animal populations, such as zebra mussels, milfoil and algae, can compromise the quality of Westminster’s water supply, and catastrophic wildfires and floods now present periods of impacted water.

The new water treatment facility will be able to handle such surges without spiking residents’ costs.

Such plans do require the utility to present constituents with tough financial forecasts. “We know that in 2023, we’re going to have to issue $25 million in debt in order to start construction of the first phase,” says Koehler. “That’s not a comfortable thing to tell people, but the data lets us say it with confidence: This is what we need.”

BATTLING NEXT-GEN POLLUTANTS Many of today’s contaminants weren’t addressed by decades-old infrastructure for water or wastewater. But these days, both are increasingly impacted by a growing assortment of contaminants such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics, heavy metals, and more.

Matthew Staver

In some places, changing regulations to cope with emerging water quality concerns have rendered old infrastructure outdated before the end of its useful life so municipalities are investigating new infrastructure to suit.

In 2016, the community of Widefield, located southeast of Colorado Springs, along with neighboring towns of Fountain and Security, detected per- and polyfluoroalykl substances (PFAS), previously referred to as perfluorochemicals (PFCs), in its groundwater at levels that were above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new 2016 health advisory levels. The contamination has been traced to firefighting chemicals used to quench fuel fires at military airports and has been linked to severe health challenges including cancers, liver and kidney damage, and more. Widefield’s existing water treatment system, though still functional, wasn’t equipped to remove or mitigate PFAS, so it was forced to upgrade.

Widefield Water and Sanitation District hired JDS-Hydro to develop a pilot program and construct a new treatment system. Carbon filtration, the most commonly used approach to PFAS treatment, wasn’t a good option because Widefield’s aquifer contains nitrates H E A DWAT E R S S U M M E R 2 0 2 0

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An ion exchange system, fitted into the corner of Widefield’s old water treatment plant, ensures that water is free of PFAS and safe to drink.

that can saturate carbon filters and cause “nitrate rolloffs” that result in problematic nutrient spikes. JDS recommended an ion exchange system that easily handles high water volumes while requiring cheaper, less frequent future maintenance. They fitted an ion exchange system in a corner of Widefield’s existing water treatment plant.

“Using ion exchange to treat PFC has been a game-changer,” says Mark Valentine, director of JDS-Hydro. “It’s more costly up front, so to get public acceptance for more innovative technologies, you have to help people understand why that up-front cost may actually pay off over the long term,” he says. With a price tag of $2.5 million, Widefield drew from its cash reserves to pay for the new system, which meant that some planned upgrades to the city’s water and wastewater system had to be postponed, but its immediate needs were met.

Nearby Security also tapped into its reserves to address the unexpected PFAS concerns, spending 40 percent of those funds to construct pipelines for purchased water from Colorado Springs Utilities. That effort diverted cash from its intended use: replacing aging underground pipe. Without those reserves, says Roy Heald, general manager of Security Water and Sanitation District, Security wouldn’t have had the flexibility to adapt to the unforeseen circumstances. “When it comes to planning and upgrading infrastructure, we still take the long view,” Heald says. “But I can’t forecast the next contaminant. It’s like the coronavirus; you just have to deal with it. And it’s hard to be nimble without money.” Thanks to that banked cash, Security and Widefield were able to quickly meet the contaminant challenge by adapting old infrastructure and building new elements to uniquely address their needs.

PRIORITIZING SUSTAINABILITY Much of Colorado’s aging infrastructure wouldn’t meet today’s standards for sustainable materials and construction. Some older parts were made with materials such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that, we now know, may harm human and environmental health.

And many foundational systems were built with a “bigger is better” 26 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

mindset, says Sarah Dominick, who worked at Denver Water for 12 years before joining Hazen and Sawyer as a consultant where she now helps utilities plan for a range of issues, including aging infrastructure.

The growing cities of yesteryear imagined that future residents would always demand more water, not less. Yet today’s water-saving toilets and appliances have actually decreased households’ usage. “Some parts of our infrastructure are oversized, because they were designed for peak flows that we never hit,” says Dominick.

Instead, she explains, forecasting future needs has more to do with resiliency than oversized capacity. The Envision Framework, out of the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure, outlines best practices for sustainable water infrastructure planning and construction and can help water providers replace aging parts and systems with updates that add resiliency, Dominick says. “Climate change, future regulation, and intense drought are just some of the future issues that utilities will confront,” Dominick says. While Envision is most effective when used in the earliest phases of project development, it can also be used when infrastructure needs to be updated. “Extending the life of existing assets is often more sustainable than building new assets,” Dominick explains. Thus Envision’s credentialing process, ENV SP, trains water professionals in approaches that emphasize resiliency and sustainability from planning to maintenance. About 150 ENV SP certifications have been awarded to professionals working in Colorado.

Westminster’s public works department, which has encouraged its staff to pursue ENV SP certification, now boasts 15 professionals with ENV SP certification, and 17 more are undergoing training.

That knowledge has prompted the department to scrutinize the materials used in water plant processes and parts to ensure they are safe during their useful lifetime and after removal and disposal. “We know this now about asbestos, for example,” says Koehler. Elements of water infrastructure systems “need to be just as safe coming out as they were in service,” she explains.

Fortunately, prices for sustainable parts, such as those made without VOCs, are declining as demand for non-toxic water Courtesy JDS Hydro

Reinventing a Historical Metro-Area Canal INFRASTRUCTURE BUILT more than a

century ago still endures, but some of Colorado’s old irrigation ditches have been repurposed to meet the moment. The High Line Canal—a 71-mile-long former irrigation conveyance turned greenway and stormwater filtration tool—winds its way through the Denver metro area as an artery of infrastructure boasting a story of adaptation.

The canal, built in the 1880s to move irrigation water, was purchased by Denver Water in the 1920s. But the metro area changed around it. By the 1960s, people were sneaking onto the service road alongside the ditch and using it as a walking trail, says Harriet Crittenden LaMair, executive director of the High Line Canal Conservancy, a nonprofit working to preserve, protect and enhance the canal.

By the 1970s, municipalities and special districts began negotiating with Denver Water to allow residents to legally enjoy the tree-lined trail. While this opened the canal up to public enjoyment, it also divided it through a series of leases and use agreements. “[The public] saw it as a greenway but it was being cared for as a utility corridor,” Crittenden LaMair says.

So sparked the development of a working group, and eventually the Highline Canal Conservancy, to create a larger, unified vision for the waterway. “In urban areas, people are rethinking the uses of old infrastructure that has outlived its original purposes,” Crittenden LaMair says. “Parks advocates are working with utilities and thinking, ‘Wow, what additional benefits can be seen from this infrastructure?’”

With the public using the trail as a recreational resource, Denver Water has been weaning customers off of water delivered through the canal, having them instead rely on more efficient conveyances. While there are still a few dozen customers receiving water

A rendering of the High Line Canal shows a flourishing future, with people recreating along the greenway and the canal itself transformed into a green infrastructure system to manage stormwater quality.

via the High Line Canal, they will switch to different sources within the next few years.

In the meantime, the canal will capture and filter stormwater. “It’s amazing that parts of the actual infrastructure built in the 1880s can be used, with modifications, for stormwater management,” Crittenden LaMair says.

The Conservancy’s 15-year plan for the canal, completed in 2018, comes with a price tag of more than $100 million in improvements, including the stormwater management infrastructure, underpasses, interpretive signage, and more. Work will be incremental, but four individual stormwater projects are already underway to filter runoff before it makes its way to receiving streams, helping municipalities and special districts meet their stormwater discharge permitting requirements.

That stormwater benefit is even lessening the new infrastructure that some developments and cities would have had to build, says Amy Turney, director of engineering for Denver Water and the utility’s stormwater lead on the High Line Canal work. “As development and roadway projects

infrastructure products has increased, Koehler says. “It helps us as an industry to think about the future of the products that we’re putting in today,” says Koehler.

Dominick also recommends that managers use phased construction to replace or upgrade aging infrastructure, allowing them more flexibility when responding to future needs—which may be unforeseen. “If you install a giant plant with one treatment technology, you may not be prepared to address new contaminants,” Courtesy High Line Canal Conservancy

get designed close to the canal, developers and cities are realizing that using the canal is a better option than having to build new detention ponds and storm sewers.”

Work on the High Line Canal hasn’t been without its challenges. Public perception has been high on that list with people cherishing the canal as a recreational greenway while the utility was using the canal as a piece of water delivery infrastructure. “We had a maintenance road that turned to a path and [neighbors] didn’t want maintenance trucks anymore. There’s been no shortage of public ownership. This is their backyard—literally,” Turney says. But it will be worthwhile in the end. “The long-term success of the infiltrated stormwater helping the greenway prosper and improving receiving stream health is a legacy for us, as well as an amenity throughout the Denver metro area that thousands enjoy every year. We’re really proud of it,” she says.

“Anyone who hears about this and cares about water gets excited about how we are saving water, and simultaneously using water for the best purposes.” H —CAITLIN COLEMAN

she explains. “But if you right-size the infrastructure, it’s more sustainable because you’re not building too big.” Designing a facility that can be easily expanded allows additional phases to be built when the need arises and if the need never arises the utility can save money. Denver Water’s Foothills Water Treatment Plant is a good example of this type of planning.

Dominick also sees a growing trend toward infrastructure rehabilitation rather than replacement. “It can be much easier and H E A DWAT E R S S U M M E R 2 0 2 0

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IMPLEMENTED AT SCALE, REUSE COULD ALLEVIATE THE NEED FOR TOWNS TO BUILD NEW PIPELINES COSTING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. AND IN REMOTE COMMUNITIES, WHERE DEVELOPERS HAVE TO BUILD NEW WASTEWATER TREATMENT FACILITIES, GRAYWATER REUSE COULD LET THEM BUILD SMALLER PLANTS. • JOHN BELL / GREYTER WATER SYSTEMS

less impactful to line a pipe than to rip it out and install a new one,” she explains. Engineers are even getting savvier about designing plants that facilitate maintenance and updates. “That wasn’t necessarily top of mind many decades ago, so simple maintenance like changing the oil in a pump might’ve required removing the plant’s ceiling,” Dominick says, describing a fictitious example of the ways that old systems often handicapped ongoing care and repair.

New designs are more likely to consider asset management. The Envision framework fosters an improvement in the resiliency of infrastructure by encouraging project decision makers to incorporate sustainable design elements that continue through the life cycle of the project.

DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS Demands on Colorado’s water have only grown since managers installed the previous generations of water infrastructure. Then, infrastructure’s goal was to move water—not necessarily to ensure its purity or to stretch it as far, says Cynthia Koehler, executive director of WaterNow Alliance, which promotes sustainable water infrastructure. “We’ve added new priorities onto our water infrastructure.” That’s a heavy burden to place on any one water provider, so communities are increasingly looking not just to replace aging systems with more of the same, but to diversify their infrastructure and think more holistically about their systems— often to include distributed technologies.

Broadly speaking, distributed infrastructure considers all elements of a water system including green infrastructure, fixtures, sprinkler systems and lawns, and in some cases lets water users—not just providers—share in the process of collecting, moving, or treating water. The overarching draw, says Cynthia Koehler, is the flexibility and resiliency that distributed infrastructure can provide. When used alongside conventional systems, distributed systems can help communities achieve their growth and sanitation goals without committing to wildly expensive new plants. “We shouldn’t be defining the problem as, ‘How do we deal with aging infrastructure?’” she posits. “It’s ‘How do we address the problems that infrastructure 28 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

is there to address?’” Distributed infrastructure creates a broader portfolio of solutions.

Graywater reuse, for example, can help communities keep their aging centralized systems in service for a longer period of time by lessening pressure on those systems. “Our reuse systems reduce the load [on municipal systems] by 20 to 25 percent,” says John Bell, chief commercial officer for Greyter Water Systems based in Ontario, Canada. “Implemented at scale, reuse could alleviate the need for towns to build new pipelines costing millions of dollars.

And in remote communities, where developers have to build new wastewater treatment facilities, graywater reuse could let them build smaller plants,” he adds.

Greyter’s first Colorado project is a 40-home development in northeast Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood that will capture shower and bath water for reuse in homes’ toilets. Construction began in

Steve Anderson, manager of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association (UVWUA), stands beside a pipeline southwest of Montrose, the “twin tubes,” part of the Montrose and Delta Canal. Originally built in the early 1900s, the tubes were updated in the 1960s. Recently, the UVWUA cut air vents into the tubes and increased the capacity of the flume which, along with the entire canal, carries more than 500 cubic feet per second.

June 2020 and was funded, in part, by a grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board.

Various technologies can treat “used” water to standards that are not quite as high as the expectations placed on drinking water—thus some Colorado water providers have converted wastewater streams to irrigation water for parks and golf courses.

Most household systems focus on “graywater” from bathroom and laundry room sinks, washing machines, and shower drains into water for irrigation and other non-potable uses, such as flushing toilets. But in Colorado, regulations and consumer acceptance still lag behind the available technology. Only Castle Rock, Denver and Pitkin County have so far adopted a Colorado code known as Regulation 86, which guides how graywater can be recycled.

Yet even more than many Western states, Colorado stands to benefit from water reuse, says Bell. That’s because Colorado’s growth William Woody

projections threaten to increase the load on conventional water infrastructure. “But if you can defer the load, you can potentially increase the building volume,” he explains.

Reuse isn’t the only distributed water efficiency measure at work in Colorado. “There are a lot of communities on Colorado’s Front Range that are just booming, but they’re thinking, ‘Where is my next gallon of water coming from?’ They can be looking at fairly expensive new infrastructure and fairly challenging political and financial burdens in terms of acquiring new water rights and building pipelines to far away sources of water,” Cynthia Koehler explains.

Distributed systems like turf replacement programs and green stormwater infrastructure could help address those needs without the soaring costs of building new conventional plants and pipes.

“Conventional-built infrastructure has done us a lot of good over the years, and we are going to continue to use it for many more,” says H E A DWAT E R S S U M M E R 2 0 2 0

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NEW SYSTEMS THAT INTEGRATE PRESSURIZED DELIVERY SYSTEMS WITH DRIP AND SPRINKLER IRRIGATION CAN IMPROVE WATER EFFICIENCY TO 80–90 PERCENT. • DAVE KANZER / COLORADO RIVER DISTRICT

Cynthia Koehler. But looking forward, she adds, Coloradans can expect to see more combined systems. By complementing conventional networks with distributed technologies, she says, “You are extending the life of conventional infrastructure, you’re lowering costs, and you’re serving the same function as those centralized solutions.”

UPGRADING IRRIGATION SYSTEMS Cities and residential developments aren’t the only sectors that are updating water infrastructure to meet the next wave of needs.

Agricultural operations are also re-evaluating existing structures and developing ways to make them meet multiple needs and values.

In revitalization projects, “multi-benefit” is the buzzword.

“New agriculture infrastructure is more efficient than the old open ditches and headgates, but that’s just one of its benefits,” explains Dave Kanzer, deputy chief engineer for the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River District. Because upgraded systems can divert less water, more can remain in the stream, benefiting fish and wildlife, water quality, and recreational users.

Replacing open irrigation ditches with enclosed underground piping is a high priority for the Colorado River District. Many of the Western Slope’s ditch systems are 50–100 years old. Occasional failures can result in damage due to localized flooding, but breaches and breakdowns aren't the only drawback to aging infrastructure.

Loss of water due to old, inefficient systems means that operators may have to divert twice the quantity of water that crops actually require. Ditch-and-furrow irrigation is also labor-intensive. Farmers must battle weeds and algae with controlled burns and noxious chemicals. And, across much of western Colorado, irrigation ditches run through marine-deposited shales that inadvertently load groundwater and return flows with salt and selenium, before that water eventually enters the Colorado River, adversely affecting downstream users and wildlife. Advanced irrigation systems can minimize that leaching.

"New systems that integrate pressurized delivery systems with drip and sprinkler irrigation can improve water efficiency to 80-90 percent," says Kanzer. The pressure that pushes water through pipe networks can also be harnessed to drive sprinklers and other irrigation devices, allowing farmers to save money by reducing their electric bills. For example, the Meaker Farm south of Montrose now exploits the pressurized pipe system rather than electricity to pump and deliver water to its big guns and center pivot irrigation.

The Lower Gunnison Project, for example, is a comprehensive series of improvements designed to boost agricultural water use 30 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

efficiency and productivity while improving water quantity, quality and habitat to stabilize stressed populations of four federally listed endangered fish and three species of special concern. Using a portfolio of federal and state funding, the Lower Gunnison Project, managed by the Colorado River District, has been able to leverage about $50 million for projects throughout Delta and Montrose counties and has been able to expand U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Salinity Control Program funding in the Uncompahgre Valley.

One of the largest irrigation water users within the Colorado River Basin in Colorado, the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association (UVWUA) has piped more than 150 miles of its vast irrigation network.

Agricultural operators in the Lower Gunnison Project area also benefit from the upgrades. UVWUA is replacing antiquated headgates with SCADA (system control and data acquisition) systems that give operators immediate feedback on the adjustments they make, so they know whether they are meeting their crop demands without waste and hitting their water efficiency targets.

The Lower Gunnison Project has also helped build surge reservoirs in the project area along with accurate measurements and controls to provide irrigators with a consistent water supply to counteract the naturally occurring surges they previously faced.

And when agriculture’s infrastructure upgrades benefit more than just the landowner, organizations such as Trout Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy grow interested in sharing the cost.

For example, the Five Ditches Project on the Rio Grande River, between Alamosa and Del Norte in southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, cost $2.8 million—but enjoyed financial support from such entities as the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Grantors are eager to fund projects that accomplish multiple goals, says Emma Reesor, executive director for the Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project that oversaw the Five Ditches effort. Many diversion dams were difficult to maintain, and replacing them with newer versions eased labor burdens on area ag operators. The updates also included fish ladders and riparian restructuring that benefit wildlife. And new headgates improved efficiency, allowing operators to divert less water. “Our first and foremost goal was to make sure the irrigators got their water,” says Reesor. “But the project also had significant additional benefits, and to get grant funding, it needs to be a multibenefit project.”

Pleasing multiple stakeholders—from households to farms to recreational enterprises and environmentalists—wasn’t foremost on settlers' minds as they constructed the state’s first water systems. But the builders of Ralston Dam and other foundational projects knew that Colorado’s future would include dramatic changes. Today’s water managers also face changing human populations, evolving contaminants—even alterations to the earth’s very climate. Even the most visionary water providers can’t anticipate or plan for every future need, but they can prioritize resilient infrastructure that can pivot to changing realities. Thus, the future of infrastructure might not be constructions that last, but ones that adapt. H A freelance writer living in Steamboat Springs, Kelly Bastone covers conservation and the outdoors for publications including Outside, AFAR, 5280, Backpacker, Field & Stream, and others.

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