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Pitkin County close to securing 1,000 acre-feet of water for Roaring Fork

Brent Gardner-Smith | Aspen Journalism
Ivanhoe Reservoir in the upper Fryingpan River Basin stores water before it is sent under the Continental Divide through a tunnel to Busk Creek and onto Turquoise Reservoir, and eventually, the Front Range. Pitkin County and other Western Slope entities opposed Aurora's effort to change the use of its water in the Busk-Ivanhoe transbasin system, and the result will be Aurora leaving more water it owns in the Roaring Fork River.
Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism | Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journa

As a way to settle a 2009 water court case involving Pitkin County and the Colorado River District, the Front Range city of Aurora has agreed to let as much as 1,000 acre-feet of water run down the upper Roaring Fork River each year instead of diverting the water under Independence Pass.

The pending settlement could mean that about 10 to 30 cubic feet per second of additional water could flow down the river through Aspen in summer and fall.

It’s an amount of water that Pitkin County Attorney John Ely said would be “visibly noticeable” and would help bolster flows in the often water-short stretch of the Fork between Difficult and Maroon creeks.



“It’s exciting,” Ely said. “It’s not very often you get to put water into the upper Roaring Fork.”

The Pitkin Board of County Commissioners is expected to approve the settlement in the form of an intergovernmental agreement with Aurora on Wednesday.




Aurora’s city council also is expected to approve the agreement, as is the Colorado River District board of directors at its July meeting. A water court judge has set a July 20 deadline for the parties to file the settlement.

Officials with Pitkin County and the River District see the deal with Aurora as a victory, especially as some estimates place the value of water in Aurora at $50,000 an acre-foot, which makes the 1,000 acre-feet of water potentially worth $50 million.

“I think it’s a big deal,” said Peter Fleming, the general counsel for the Colorado River District, which represents 15 counties on the Western Slope. “I think it’s going to be a good deal for Pitkin County, the Roaring Fork River and the West Slope as a whole. And frankly, I think it’s a pretty good deal for Aurora, as well.”

But Tom Simpson, a water resource supervisor with Aurora, said it’s a “bittersweet” deal for the growing Front Range city.

“We’ve worked hard on this agreement over the last year,” Simpson said. “It is bittersweet, but we are happy that we are finally there.”

The deal lets Aurora retain its current use of 2,416 acre-feet of water it diverts on average each year from the top of the Fryingpan River Basin, but Aurora also is giving up 1,000 acre-feet of water it now diverts from the top of the Roaring Fork River Basin.

Aurora also is agreeing to abide by operating protocols and future potential use of the senior water rights on the Colorado River now tied to the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon. That agreement could limit the amount of additional water Aurora can divert in the future from the Colorado River Basin.

Started in 2009

In 2009, Aurora filed a water rights application in state water court to change the use of its water rights in the Busk-Ivanhoe transmountain diversion system in the Fryingpan River headwaters.

The system, built in the 1920s, gathers water from several creeks and diverts the water through the Ivanhoe Tunnel to Turquoise Reservoir near Leadville before it is sent to East Slope cities.

In its application, Aurora told the water court it wanted to change the use of its water in the Busk-Ivanhoe system from irrigation to municipal use.

However, it also conceded it had already been using the Busk-Ivanhoe water for municipal purposes in Aurora, even though its water-right decree limited the use of the water to irrigation use in the lower Arkansas River valley.

That caught the attention of Pitkin County, the Colorado River District, a host of other Western Slope water interests and the state engineer’s office, which administers water rights.

In 2013 the Western Slope entities and the state took Aurora to a five-day water-court trial, arguing that Aurora should not get credit for its 22 years of undecreed water use.

But in 2014, a district court judge ruled in Aurora’s favor, and the West Slope interests then appealed to the state Supreme Court.

In 2016, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision, ruled in favor of the Western Slope, and remanded Aurora’s original change application back to the lower court.

Aurora was then facing another trial to determine exactly how much of its right to 2,416 acre-feet of Busk-Ivanhoe water it could retain after factoring in its penalizing undecreed use, which could have cut the water right in half.

So Aurora began negotiating with the Western Slope entities still in the case, which included Pitkin County, Eagle County, the Colorado River District, the Grand Valley Water Users Association, the Basalt Water Conservancy District, Eagle County, Orchard Mesa Irrigation District and Ute Water Conservancy District.

Flows in the Fork

For Pitkin County and other Western Slope entities, it made more sense to negotiate with Aurora for some of the water it owns in the Independence Pass-Twin Lakes system rather than than the Busk-Ivanhoe system, as any water bypassed by the Busk-Ivanhoe system would be scooped up by the Fry-Ark Project, which sits below the Busk-Ivanhoe system in the upper Fryingpan valley and also diverts water to the East Slope.

If the deal is approved, as soon as next year 700 acre-feet of Aurora’s water is expected to be captured briefly in the Independence Pass system, which includes dams on Lost Man Creek, the main stem of the Roaring Fork River and on Grizzly Creek, and then released down either the Fork or Lincoln Creek toward Aspen.

Another 200 acre-feet of Aurora’s Twin-Lakes water will be held in Grizzly Reservoir on Lincoln Creek, which holds 570 acre-feet of water. That water will then be released late in the year, after most transmountain diversions have stopped, to bolster late-season flows in the river.

Another 100 acre-feet of water could also eventually be left in the Fork each year after a complicated exchange-of-water arrangement is worked out with Aurora and other parties on the Fryingpan River, which brings the potential total water left in the Fork to 1,000 acre-feet.

Aspen Journalism is collaborating on the coverage of rivers and water with The Aspen Times. More at http://www.aspenjournalism.org.

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