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Denver Water is investing millions of dollars in developing innovative ways to meet its most important responsibility — ensuring customers always have the quantity and quality of water they need. To do so, Denver Water has a diverse plan to meet those future needs: conserve, recycle and develop.
And it’s working. Denver Water customers are using 20 percent less water than they were before the 2002 drought — and there are 10 percent more of them. Denver Water’s recycled water distribution system is freeing up enough drinking water to serve roughly 15,000 households; once it’s complete, the system will free up enough drinking water to serve almost 45,000 homes.
And Denver Water’s Moffat Collection System Project, one of the major elements of our supply plan, will help resolve three major supply challenges: a future water shortfall, the risk of running out of water in a future drought and a serious imbalance in Denver Water’s collection system.
The Project
If approved, the Moffat Collection System Project would provide 18,000 acre-feet of new supply by enlarging an existing reservoir rather than building a new one. The current dam height would increase from 340 feet to approximately 465 feet, nearly tripling the reservoir’s capacity. The project would increase the reservoir’s current storage capacity of 41,811 acre-feet to approximately 118,000 acre-feet. That number includes a dedicated 5,000 acre-foot environmental pool, which will be used to enhance streamflows below Gross Reservoir.
It will also provide many benefits to the West Slope, making the West Slope better with the Moffat Project than without it. In order to gain the support necessary to proceed with the Moffat Project, Denver Water took an unprecedented approach of negotiating with more than 40 entities in western Colorado, from the Continental Divide to the state line, including Grand and Summit counties.
Denver Water recognizes the interdependencies between the East and West slopes, and that the old way of water development in Colorado will be divisive, and destructive to the environment and economy. As a result, Denver Water and the West Slope agreed on a simple yet powerful goal: To make the West Slope better with the Moffat Project than without it.
The Colorado River Cooperative Agreement, the result of those negotiations, provides for an array of enhancements over and above the mitigation of impacts that will be required under state and federal environmental permitting processes for the Moffat Project. The agreement represents a more responsible way of water development in Colorado. It has been hailed as a model for the future in statewide inter-basin water discussions.
Questions?
Denver Water is interested in your comments and will answer what questions it can at this time. Send questions to publicinformation@denverwater.org.