Our thoughts and prayers are with you both.
Volume 15 • Edition 7
April 6, 2022
Delivering to over 17,000 homes & businesses including all of Fort Lupton and Lochbuie city and rural routes.
“Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light” George Washington “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed” Thomas Jefferson
Nebraska Wants to Build a $500 Million Canal Over the Border. Can Colorado Stop It? Remnants of the last time the Huskers tried this, in 1894, pock the landscape of far northeastern Colorado. Experts say there’s a difference between water rights and what’s right. by Michael Booth, The Colorado Sun
Interstate 76 and U.S. 385 intersect near the South Platte River in Sedgwick County. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
JULESBURG — If Nebraska does indeed try to dig a $500 million canal across its border and take water from the South Platte River on the Colorado side, it will have to be over the dead bodies in this town’s cemetery. Or perhaps under them. At the very least, extremely close. That includes the great-great-grandparents of Jay Goddard, whose big white Suburban is fishtailing around the edges of the cemetery and through the muddy remnants of the last canal Nebraska tried to dig in Colorado. Goddard, a fifthgeneration farmer, points out century-old footprints of the canal Nebraska wants to revive. Goddard’s ancestors likely got a kick out of watching 600 Nebraskans with shovels, struggling to sculpt the rolling hills into a waterway before they finally gave up and went home in 1894. Nebraskans are Goddard’s friends and neighbors, and employ his wife as a schoolteacher a few miles away in Big Springs. Nebraska may even have a legal right to buy up Julesburg land and send the bulldozers over, he admits. But water is gold on the increasingly dry high plains. And a water war among friends is still a water war. Nebraska’s rich fields need water as much as Colorado does, Goddard said. But as a regional bank president, he sees prosperous Sedgwick County farmers expanding, developers buying land, and Fort Collins and Greeley to the west growing relentlessly. Colorado’s 6 million people could be 12 million before the canal fight is settled. “These guys were trying to do the same thing back in the 1890s. And here we are 100 years later,” Goddard said, his arm sweeping across the cottonwoods lining the South Platte River through Julesburg and on to the Nebraska border a mile beyond. “We’ve got to figure out how to make it work for the next 100 years.” Why is Nebraska lining up bulldozers? Eroded berms and meandering, overgrown ditches from Nebraska’s 1890s canal effort are familiar marks on the landscape along 24 miles on the south flats of the South Platte River, from Ovid to Julesburg, and then east from the cemetery toward the state border 12 miles away. Nebraska water officials say a healthy 7% of the supply in the agriculture-heavy state comes from the South Platte, before it joins its northern branch at North Platte. A 1923 compact settlement with Colorado guarantees Nebraska a flow of 120 cubic feet per second from April 1 to Oct. 15 where the South Platte leaves Colorado just northeast of Julesburg. For the other half of the year, the compact allows Nebraska 500 cubic feet per second, but only through a canal that would leave the South Platte near Ovid and crawl east. Absent a canal, Colorado from Oct. 16 through March can use South Platte water without worrying how much gets to Nebraska, though in recent years records show it has usually sent significant winter water to its neighbor. But Nebraska leaders say they no longer trust Colorado to deliver the water without a Nebraska-dug canal. Gov. Pete Ricketts, flush with federal stimulus cash, suddenly announced in January he would seek legislative approval for reviving the canal, at a Nebraska Wants to Build a $500 Million Canal Over the Border. Can Colorado Stop It? continued on page 11...
United Power Should be able to Leave Tri-State for Less Than a Tenth of a Proposed $1.6B Exit Fee, Federal Report Says
An energy economist for Tri-State’s federal regulator called the energy association’s exit-fee calculations flawed and unreasonable. by Mark Jaffe, The Colorado Sun
United Power’s Rattlesnake Solar Farm sits on 175 acres near Platteville, Colorado. The ability to generate additional power using renewable resources is one of the motivators for the company to break up with Tri-State Generation. (Carl Payne, Special to The Colorado Sun)
In the running battle over how much a suburban Denver electric cooperative must pay to leave the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the co-op picked up some ammunition in a report by a federal energy economist that calls the association’s exit fee calculations flawed and unreasonable. The exit fee for Brighton-based United Power should be less than a tenth of the $1.6 billion Tri-State is seeking, according to Greg Golino, an economist with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “We know we owe something, because we are participants in a contract, but it should be just and reasonable and the FERC analysis shows that,” said Mark Gabriel, United Power’s CEO. In an extensive rebuttal, Tri-State, a power wholesaler serving 43 rural electric cooperatives in four states, warned that low exit fees could stress its operating system and create an incentive for big co-ops to depart, leaving its smallest members stranded. “This economic incentive creates a dangerous and unstable situation and can lead to the unraveling and eventual bankruptcy of Tri-State,” Joseph Mancinelli, an expert witness for the association, said in a FERC filing. “The only winners will be a few members like United Power, who are first to leave the system.” Why United Power and Tri-State don’t get along Tri-State’s six largest cooperatives, based on association exit fee calculations, account for 47% of the association’s revenue. The fight between Tri-State and its largest member, United Power, has been going United Power Should be able to Leave Tri-State for Less Than a Tenth of a Proposed $1.6B Exit Fee, Federal Report Says continued on page 12...
WHAT’S IN THIS ISSUE
Page 2: Way of the World Page 3: United Power Board of Directors Candidates Page 4: Fort Lupton Booster Club Solicitation for Prom 2022 Page 5: Town Easter Egg Hunt Fliers Page 6: Meet Hannah Chambers – FFA Member Page 8 – 10: Weld RE3J Update Page 13: Sheree’s Seniors Christmas 2021 Page 14: CCA Science Fair 2022 Page 16: Lily Fresh Farms Bridal Show