As baseball player Yogi Berra is reputed to have said: “The future ain’t what it used to be.” That’s certainly true for Denver Water.
Ten years ago, Denver Water developed one of the first Integrated Resource Plans in the nation. The plan looked broadly at options for the future, including recycling of water, finding new supplies and ramping up conservation efforts.
Now it’s time to update the plan, and with it come uncertainties:
• Climate change: Manager Chips Barry said Denver has 50 years of records showing rainfall, patterns of water use and the like. But with climate change increasingly apparent, the department’s confidence in the relevance of the data is weakening. “We don’t think we’re moving from climate A to climate B,” Barry said. “We think we’re facing a continually moving target.”
• The Colorado River Compact: With drought in the lower basin states, will Nevada, Arizona and California put a “call” on the river, forcing upper-basin states (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico) to provide them with more water? Such a “call” has never been issued, and no one is really sure how one would work.
The compact requires the upper-basin states to provide 75 million acre- feet over any 10-year period to lower- basin states. But would upper-basin states have to provide the full amount in one year? Such a requirement could prove disastrous to Colorado.
Under the compact, Colorado is entitled to 51 percent of the upper basin’s share of the river, but takes a smaller amount. Should Colorado take its full share? Would doing so force a “call” by the lower-basin states?
• Denver’s service area: For example, should Denver help Douglas County water users meet their water needs? Denver could acquire additional water supplies and sell a fixed amount to them under contract. Or it could sell water to them only in wet years, forcing them to use wells during dry years. There’s no legal obligation for Denver to serve others, but does letting an area like Douglas County run out of water do anyone any good?
One question in formal mediation between Denver and the Western Slope counties is whether there should be geographic limits to the area Denver serves.
• Water quality requirements: Although no one knows how to remove contaminants from Colorado’s rivers, the EPA may tighten drinking water standards. How could water providers deal with such a mandate?
• Oil shale: It’s almost impossible, Barry says, to estimate how much water would be required if oil shale were to be developed.
• Drought: How often are normal drought restrictions (watering every three days, for example) acceptable? Are severe restrictions (i.e., no outdoor watering whatsoever) ever acceptable? Should Denver acquire additional water to prepare for drought? How much water, and at what cost, when the excess water might only be used a couple of times in 100 years?
The process of studying and weighing these uncertainties is just beginning. Denver Water plans to seek input from the environmental community and its distributor partners before the report is finalized in 2010.
The issues are enormously complicated and the stakes are extremely high for Denver, the areas it serves under contract, its surrounding neighbors and the Western Slope.
Susan Thornton (smthornton@aol.com) served 16 years on the Littleton City Council, eight years as mayor.
