COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—The aquifer beneath the Upper Black Squirrel basin took a million years to form, as water rushing down from the mountains carved an underground lake with fingers stretching for miles beneath the eastern El Paso County plains.
By some estimates, it could be depleted in less than 100 years.
Water users and the Colorado Geological Survey are working on a plan to replenish this disappearing aquifer, an ambitious project to pump underground 500,000 acre feet of water—six times what Colorado Springs Utilities customers use in a year—to create Colorado’s first man-made underground storage reservoir.
In August, the geological agency will release a report on the possibility. Though many legal and practical questions remain—the most important being where the water will come from—geologists are excited about the prospects.
And nobody is more excited than eastern and northern El Paso County water suppliers, who hope it can be a solution for their disappearing water.
For the water suppliers, the project could mean a cheap alternative to reservoirs, where water could be deposited and withdrawn like a bank account without the fear of evaporation. Most of these suppliers lack the resources to build reservoirs and have no way to store excess water during the slow months to augment supply during heavy summer use.
Officials say the aquifer project represents a new approach among the disparate water suppliers of El Paso County: Several often-feuding water interests have put their differences aside in support of the project.
“It can be done. I’m not going to say it’s going to be easy and everyone is going to be singing the campfire song and roasting marshmallows together,” said Kip Petersen, director of the Cherokee Metropolitan District just east of Colorado Springs, which draws water from the aquifer.
“I think it can be done without fighting. I don’t think we’ve ever cooperatively approached a project like this,” he said.
Two years ago, state law SB193 mandated that Colorado officials study the possibility of underground water storage in the South Platte and Arkansas river basins.
The Upper Black Squirrel aquifer was identified as one of the most promising sites.
A combination of geology and legality makes it the perfect site, said Ralf Topper, project manager for the Colorado Geological Survey.
The Upper Black Squirrel basin is known as an alluvial aquifer, much shallower than the deep bedrock of the Denver Basin. Officials believe it is mostly self-contained, meaning not much water will be lost to seepage. It is a state-designated basin, so it isn’t tied to any downstream surface water rights. There are water lines in place and water suppliers to use the storage space.
And officials know the water is disappearing.
In 1974, the Colorado Water Conservation Board determined the aquifer had dropped from 400,000 acre feet to 350,000 in 10 years, largely depleted by thirsty farms and ranches in eastern El Paso County. A 1967 study predicted the water would be gone by 2000.
The number of farms has dwindled, replaced by housing subdivisions, and a 1993 study predicted the water would last until 2035. Nobody is sure how much water remains in the basin—something the current study will determine.
While Colorado Springs Utilities has spent more than a century buying water and building reservoirs to capture mountain snow runoff, most of the water for homes, farms and businesses in El Paso County comes from nonrenewable groundwater aquifers. According to the El Paso County Water Authority, which works on water issues on behalf of local suppliers, demand for water outside Colorado Springs is expected to be 32,260 acre-feet a year by 2020, up from 19,870 in 2000.
The vanishing water is not unique to El Paso County. Communities across the West, built on finite groundwater resources, are using recharge, pumping excess water back into the aquifer. There are 230 recharge projects in Colorado, which in 2005 pumped 190,000 acre feet of water back into the ground, mostly in the South Platte River basin around Denver. In most cases, the water is treated sewage effluent.
But those projects are just trying to keep up with current use, said Topper. Nowhere in Colorado has an aquifer been recharged for underground storage.
“This would be the first to replace depleted groundwater,” Topper said. “(The cost) is much less than building a new reservoir, and much more timely, in terms of its implementation.”
The Colorado Geological Survey report will cover only the technical feasibility of the Upper Black Squirrel project. If it determines the project is possible, the agency would then seek a water utility to take part in a pilot project to begin injecting water into the aquifer.
Gary Barber, manager of the El Paso County Water Authority, sees the project as a move away from the traditional way groundwater is handled here: a patchwork of small water fiefdoms, jealously guarding their own supply.
“We’re trying to do a common good approach. Let’s recharge this for everybody,” Barber said. “I personally am pushing this thing, and I’m trying to find out how we get to a more utilitarian model.”
The Cherokee Metropolitan District isn’t waiting for the pilot project.
The utility is building a new sewage treatment plant and plans to start injecting treated effluent into the aquifer for storage. It has built 11 ponds where the water will percolate down into the aquifer.
Wells out of the underground reservoir would be metered, and water users would be limited to taking out what they put in, Petersen said. He believes it can work.
But, he said, “It will take, I think, a large change in cooperative attitudes.”
In the West, goes the proverb, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.
And the Upper Black Squirrel is the OK Corral.
The Upper Black Squirrel Creek Ground Water Management District, appointed by the state to protect the water, fought Cherokee to the state Supreme Court in 2006 over Cherokee’s approval of developments. The court agreed Cherokee had promised to provide more water than it could supply and placed limits on how much it can pump from the basin. The district was later critical of a Cherokee plan to pump water from a deeper aquifer.
More recently, the Upper Black Squirrel district took a developer and El Paso County to court, claiming the developer did not perform the required number of tests on septic tank seepage and that the county’s approval of the Sanctuary in the Pines subdivision in Black Forest was granted without all necessary information. A judge ruled against the district in April, allowing the development to proceed.
Such disputes are typical of the piecemeal approach to water development in the unincorporated parts of the county, and it makes the basin a funny place, perhaps, for a project that will take the cooperation of these same agencies.
But these old enemies are in favor of it.
“I definitely think that’s the only answer, to find a way to bring more water in,” said Dave Doran, president of the Black Squirrel district. “The alluvial aquifer is a great source of water if it is managed right and it’s a renewable source, while the bedrocks beneath it are nonrenewable.”
“From a conceptual perspective, we would support it,” said Sandra Martin, president of Protect Our Wells, a group of residents on private wells in El Paso County.
She cautioned that an underground reservoir shouldn’t be carte blanche for new development in the area.
“I think we have a lot of concerns with the water and I don’t think there’s one answer,” Martin said. “It’s going to take a lot of options, a lot of collaboration and it’s not going to be the silver bullet that fixes all the water issues here.”
Petersen acknowledged an underground reservoir won’t solve all of Cherokee’s water problems, and the district’s long-term goal is to find a renewable water source. Watering restrictions will probably remain in place in the district for now, he said.
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