Posted on May 22, 2017
By Jeff Stahla, Reporter-Herald
Officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have given their final approval for Northern Water to build Chimney Hollow Reservoir southwest of Loveland.
Kiel Downing, Denver regulatory office chief for the Corps of Engineers, announced Wednesday afternoon the Record of Decision for the Clean Water Act permit for the Windy Gap Firming Project, which includes the reservoir.
With the final federal permit in hand, Northern Water officials can start planning for construction of the $400 million project, which is set to start in late 2018 or early 2019, according to Northern Water Public Information Officer Brian Werner.
“We’re smiling,” Werner said. “These things come along once in a generation.”
Berthoud-based Northern Water will manage the construction of a pair of dams in a valley west of Carter Lake that will hold approximately 90,000 acre-feet of water, or about 29 billion gallons — enough water for more than 90,000 households.
Water to fill Chimney Hollow will come from the Colorado River basin in years when its flows are above average. The water will be carried through a diversion at Windy Gap Reservoir in Grand County to Lake Granby and the Colorado-Big Thompson Project.
Municipalities including Loveland, Fort Collins and Greeley conceived of Windy Gap in 1970. The need for storage space for the communities involved to “firm” their ownership of the Windy Gap water rights expanded in later years to include Chimney Hollow Reservoir because in above-average precipitation years, Lake Granby often does not have enough space to store the additional water.
Rep. Hugh McKean, R-Loveland, said he was ecstatic when he heard about the Corps of Engineers’ approval, comparing it to Christmas.
In his time serving on the Loveland City Council and then the Colorado House of Representatives, he has seen how much the storage project was needed.
“It became much clearer — this is an absolute necessity,” he said.
For cities such as Loveland, Windy Gap water fills an important role for its municipal users because it is a 365-day-a-year, deliverable water source, unlike in-basin seasonal water offered through local ditch companies. It will join the Colorado-Big Thompson Project shares in the city’s water portfolio.
“This is decades’ worth of water,” he said.
Even though the city has had ownership rights since 1970 to Windy Gap water, it has flowed out of the state each year because Loveland and other cooperating cities had no place to put it.
“What I’ve always said is what we need is a bathtub” to store the water, and Chimney Hollow will fill that role.
McKean acknowledges that because the water has not been diverted before, questions and concerns will emerge from Western Slope water users and communities. However, because the Windy Gap Firming Project water is available only in years of above-average flows on the Colorado River, municipalities on the Front Range won’t be served until water rights holders on the Western Slope get their allocations.
He said he will be in Montrose this summer at a meeting of the Uncompahgre Water Users Association to talk about the project’s effect on the basins and in the context of the state water plan.
“They need to see and hear from us,” he said.
Source: Reporter-herald
