Though it is understandable that Denver Water’s longtime director is stepping down, we can’t help but feel a little sad that Chips Barry has decided to leave the utility.
For nearly 19 years Barry has been a steady hand at the powerful utility and has transformed its reputation. Barry focused more on cooperation and steered Denver Water away from throwing its weight around with small towns on the Western Slope.
And the utility’s focus on conservation, highlighted by its “Use Only What You Need” campaign, has been wonderfully clever and effective. Since the 2002 drought, Denverites have reduced their water use from above the national average to comfortably below it, or by 33 percent.
“People recognized that there was value to leaving water in streams and working out differences rather than fighting all the time,” he told The Post in 2003, and he’s kept to that philosophy.
Barry, 65, says he plans to spend more time on his Hawaiian farm, producing macadamia nuts, coffee and honey, and who can blame him?
As he put it, running Denver Water “is a big, public, visible, high-power job. I’ve been here a long enough time that, I think, I should move on and let somebody else do it.”
Born to a prominent Denver family, educated at Yale and Columbia, Hamlet Joseph Barry III’s choice to go by a childhood nickname says much about him, and his easy-going, folksy approach has been a good fit for Denver’s laid-back culture.
We will miss his leadership and character, and wish him well.
Barry’s exit comes as Denver Water is trying to expand the existing Gross Reservoir above Boulder. It’s exactly the kind of project that requires Barry’s mix of resolve and diplomacy as the utility works to satisfy environmentalists and Western Slope residents to bring in needed additional supply.
The search for a replacement should be geared toward finding a director with those kinds of skills.
