Itap not just the 70-degree temperatures that have been unseasonable in Loveland this fall. The city’s namesake lake is unusually full — not to mention picturesque — for this time of year.
But that full shoreline comes at the expense of Boyd Lake, which sits far lower than usual while undergoing infrastructure repairs, said Daniel Kammerzell, general manager of the (GLIC), which owns the water stored in both reservoirs.
“We needed to draw Boyd down and basically keep water in Lake Loveland so we can make our offseason deliveries to the Big Thompson River,” he said. “With Boyd being down for maintenance and repairs, our only reservoir that can make releases to the Big Thompson River is Lake Loveland. So we basically had to keep water in there all summer to ensure enough supply to make those deliveries all winter long and spring.”
Currently, Lake Loveland is at 86% capacity, with 11,000 acre-feet (AF) of water, just below its total capacity of 12,736 AF. After filling in June, the lake was at 90% capacity or 11,300 AF. (An acre-foot is the volume of water needed to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot, about 326,000 gallons.)
Meanwhile, GLIC is tackling two separate repair projects at Boyd Lake after one of its pumps failed earlier this year. To facilitate the work, the lake, which covers more than 2,000 land acres, is currently filled with just 17,500 AF of its roughly 48,600 AF capacity, or 36%, the lowest level itap been in more than 15 years, Kammerzel said.
“This is the year it made sense to draw it down, because we don’t get the opportunity to draw it down very often,” he said.
Kammerzell noted that both Lake Loveland and Boyd Lake are, technically speaking, storage reservoirs, not natural lakes, a distinction that explains their fluctuating levels.
“People kind of lose sight of the definition of a reservoir,” he said. “They think of them as recreation lakes that should be full all the time, and we’d love them to be full all the time, but their main purpose — what they were built for — is to hold water to be used later.”
Under Colorado water law, GLIC can refill its reservoirs only during the spring runoff period. After the irrigation season ends in late September, the company shifts to what it calls its off-season deliveries, releasing water from Lake Loveland back to the Big Thompson River through an underground conduit running beneath Colorado Avenue to First Street.
Those releases began in October and will continue until irrigation resumes in May, which means that Lake Loveland’s level will fall until it is refilled sometime next spring, Kammerzel said.
As for Boyd Lake, he continued, it could remain low through the 2026 season, depending on construction progress and snowpack levels, though itap too early to know for certain.
“It could be a multi-year project,” he said.
