While the details have yet to be fully worked out – and there are many, many details involved – the ultimate goals of the Platte Valley Water Partnership are beginning to come into focus.
One crucial element of that partnership is Parker Water and Sanitation District’s intent to leave its senior irrigation water shares in the lower reaches of the river and replace them with “new” water under a 2019 water right owned jointly by Parker and the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District. That new water would come from the occasional glut of water that comes down the South Platte, usually during spring runoff and in seasonal downpours elsewhere in the basin.
The conservancy district, commonly known simply as “Lower,” and the Parker district announced in 2021 a formal agreement to develop a joint water right that would yield more than 30,000 acre feet of water from the South Platte River on average. That water would come from those occasional excess flows that send much more water past Fort Morgan, Sterling and Julesburg than anyone can capture now.
Parker already owns several farms in the Iliff area and, by extension, those farms’ shares in the Prewitt Reservoir. Parker Water’s senior irrigation water continues to irrigate those farms, while their Prewitt water is used locally for augmentation. In a recent interview with the Journal-Advocate, Lower’s Manager Joe Frank said that if the current project continues as planned, Parker has let Lower know it intends for that to continue indefinitely.
“We’ve always envisioned this project as helping agriculture,” Frank said. “The agreements that we’re putting in place will take time, but a key component of that negotiation is that the infrastructure won’t be used to dry up farms.”
The only way to do that, however, is to build some new infrastructure; new reservoirs to store the new water, and a pipeline to send Parker’s portion of that new water uphill to its own reservoir.
The partnership involves the phased development of the water right. The early phases would involve a new 6,500 acre-foot reservoir near Iliff and a pipeline from Prewitt Reservoir in Logan and Washington counties to Reuter-Hess Reservoir owned by Parker Water, which supplies the City of Parker and others in Douglas County. Later developments would see a 72,000 acre-foot reservoir near Fremont Butte north of Akron. A pipeline, pump stations, and treatment facility will also be built as part of the project. During all phases of the project, Lower’s portion of the new water will be delivered to its constituents in Morgan, Washington, Logan and Sedgwick counties providing a much-needed water supply in northeast Colorado.
The new reservoir near Iliff would more efficiently deliver Prewitt water to irrigators downstream. As it is, farmers who call for their Prewitt water have to wait for that water to travel downstream, and what reaches them is always less than what is released because of a phenomenon known as “river shrink;” water seeps out of the river bed or evaporates as it travels downstream. By capturing excess flow in an Iliff area reservoir, the Platte Valley Water Partnership project would help Prewitt irrigators in that area receive more of their allotted water. This would be done by trading these Prewitt irrigators for some of their water in the Prewitt Reservoir and giving them the same amount of water in the Iliff area reservoir closer to where they need their water..
“It would be a more efficient use of the water, and it would be a plus for the irrigators and for the Platte Valley Water Partnership,” Frank said.
In addition, excess water captured in the Prewitt could be pumped west for delivery to Parker Water and to Morgan County, or be pumped into the Fremont Butte reservoir and later either released back into the South Platte for use downstream or be pumped up to Parker Water and to Morgan County .
If it all sounds complicated, well … it is. And that, Frank said, is the new reality of providing water to support Front Range population growth and sustain farm irrigation for producers hard-pressed by climate change and increased pressure to let more water flow downstream (read “Nebraska.”) all without permanently drying up agricultural land.
To Frank, the beauty of the Platte Valley Water Partnership is the collaboration between two regions that historically have been at odds over water.
“It’s all about community, and our focus has to be to benefit our local constituents,” Frank said. “We’ve got two communities, 120 miles apart, working toward a common goal. It’s really about the people of Colorado.”
