Every day that the expansion of Gross Reservoir is stalled is a day where precious water – that Denver has owned the rights to for years — floats downstream unused by a booming and increasingly water-wise Front Range.
We are dismayed that, based on what amounts to a procedural quibble, a federal court judge ordered Denver Water to abandon the expansion project and halt ongoing construction in two weeks, mothballing the proposed deepening of the reservoir.
Legal documents, and interviews with Denver Water’s CEO and the head legal counsel, convinced the Board that the utility needs this additional storage capacity.
But perhaps more importantly, Denver Water should prevail on appeal because the utility has spent decades painstakingly complying with federal environmental law – checking every box – and has spent millions in remediation on both sides of the divide for the environmental impact of expanding the dam.
The Denver Post editorial board has lamented the frustrating delays to this project, which is the smart alternative to the misguided Two Forks dam rejected by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1990. Two Forks would have drowned the town of Deckers and 30 miles of pristine fish habitat along the South Platte River.
As an alternative, the Gross Reservoir expansion will have considerably less environmental impact while fulfilling a second need that the Two Rivers project wouldn’t have – providing an alternative, albeit limited, northern water source in case the southern water distribution network is compromised by fire, contamination, or even human error or malicious hacking.
Ironically, the lawsuit seeking to stop the 131-foot raising of the Gross Dam is hanging on the argument that the U.S. Army Crops of Engineers failed to adequately consider all alternatives to storing water in Gross Reservoir.
Suffice it to say that we are convinced all alternatives have been given adequate consideration in the 35 years since Two Rivers was felled by the EPA and President George H.W. Bush.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deemed that the Gross Reservoir was the only place where both of Denver Waters’ goals could be met — increasing storage generally and specifically doing so north of the city so the water would feed through that purification and supply system. Expanding an existing dam rather than building new actually reduces the environmental impact.
In 2003, the EPA commented on the initial draft proposal and need statement by suggesting a single purpose and need would be easier to address than multiple ones — “It would be more useful if a single, basic project purpose could be developed so that various alternatives would not have to be examined for each separate project purpose.” The EPA suggested a consolidation.
When the Corps issued its final draft proposal, the EPA responded by thanking the Corps for their work on the issue and did not appeal or push back again on the question, according to officials with Denver Water and public documents.
The anti-dam movement has gained traction across the West. Dams are coming down in California, Oregon and Washington. Talk of dismantling Glen Canyon Dam once it reaches dead-pool status has gained surprising traction.
Dams are an imperfect solution to the threat of climate change – water stored is lost to evaporation, and the dams have cushioned overuse for years, hiding the lack of water behind consumptive use until crisis occurs.
But dams also have prevented great suffering across the West during drought. In a system built entirely on a use-it-or-lose-it ethos, there is a perverse incentive to overuse water in times of plenty. In times of drought, draconian limits on showers and flushes while trees die are the flip side of the coin.
Reservoirs norm out years of plenty and years of dirth, reducing the extremity of conservation measures.
It is not the duty of the Army Corps or the EPA to find a flawless solution to Denver’s water needs, only one that satisfies federal law, particularly the Clean Waters Act and the National Environmental Protection Act. Stopping construction now also won’t reverse the damage that has already been done to the wetlands below the dam. The larger foundation for the higher dam has already been poured.
Denver Water has also spent millions on a river restoration project on South Boulder Creek and another along the Williams Fork River. These were required remediations for the impact of the dam project.
Yes, the new normal will be using less and less water across the West. The transition to a drier climate will be painful. But the question that will come before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals is not whether Gross Reservoir will dull that pain enough to be worth the environmental cost, but whether Denver Water and the Army Corps complied with federal law during years of detailed analysis.
No permitting application is perfect, but we find it hard to believe that after 35 years, countless meetings, numerous analyses conducted by state and federal experts and hours of public feedback, this process was so inadequate as to warrant scrapping the project mid-way through completion.
We’d hazard to guess that upon appeal, the 10th Circuit will find the project can move forward.
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