PARKER — An expanded reservoir south of the city will be 50 percent larger than Cherry Creek Reservoir, help thirsty Douglas County residents whose wells are low and provide a place to fish and play.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently approved the Parker Water and Sanitation District’s request to quadruple the size of the Rueter-Hess Reservoir near Parker.
When it is completed in 2011, it will serve the Parker area as well as Castle Rock, Castle Pines North and Stonegate, all of which agreed to buy into the partnership. Although it won’t be a full solution to the area’s water problems, it will help as Douglas County continues to add houses. It will also bring in new sources of water to existing homes.
“Rueter-Hess is only a water-management tool,” said Frank Jaeger, manager of the Parker Water and Sanitation District. “We are going to have to find other sources of water. We’re looking in every river basin. In order to sustain the type of growth on the Front Range, water is going to have to be developed on all those basins.”
The reservoir will store both future water acquisitions and recycled water from the system’s two wastewater treatment plants. The water district also will be able to divert and store water from Cherry Creek.
The expansion will allow the reservoir to store 72,000 acre-feet of water and be 1,140 acres on the surface. That is enough water for 140,000 homes.
The first phase of the reservoir, which already is built, can store 16,000 acre-feet. The total price at completion is estimated at $165 million.
Although final recreation plans for the reservoir haven’t been worked out, Jaeger said, there will likely be fishing at Rueter-Hess, as well as nonmotorized boating such as with canoes and rowboats.
About 2,000 acres of open space, mainly west of the reservoir, will be set aside for wildlife and will include hiking and biking trails.
Bart Miller, water program director for Western Resource Advocates in Boulder, applauded Parker’s efforts to store treated wastewater at Rueter-Hess. But he said the city and all of Douglas County need to do more to encourage conservation.
“There is a lot of growth happening in south metro that is being done on top of nonrenewable ground water, the Denver Basin aquifer,” Miller said. “But you can only use it once, and it’s gone. Aquifers don’t get recharged with snow or rain.”
Recent studies have found that the aquifers are being depleted at about 30 feet a year.
That is why Jaeger and others think the area needs to secure more water options by gaining rights on one of the state’s river basins, such as the Arkansas or South Platte.
“I believe we will have to import water in the long term, that being only 20 years,” Jaeger said. “We need to be working diligently to develop water from other river basins and import water through pipelines.”
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
