“Powerless” against Denver Water, Boulder County OKs deal to triple size of Gross Reservoir
by Michael Booth, Colorado Sun, November 2, 2021
Commissioners say they hate the project, but the odds of winning a lawsuit were poor. Denver Water upped the offer to help mitigate impacts of construction to $12.5 million.
The Boulder County Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved a settlement allowing Denver Water to expand the dam and pool at Gross Reservoir, despite vocal opposition from some residents, after a $10 million mitigation deal was sweetened by $2.5 million to soften construction impacts for neighbors.
Denver Water is likely to vote Wednesday to approve a total of $12.5 million in mitigation and open space donations for Boulder County, after last-minute talks raised the sum.
“I understand people’s disappointment with where we are. The law is not on our side,” Commissioner Claire Levy added.
The commissioners said they were heartsick at the destruction the dam expansion will cause for neighbors and for revered county open lands. But, they added, county attorneys advised them that federal laws preempt their planning process because the existing dam includes a hydroelectric generator and is therefore controlled by federal laws.
The attorneys said Boulder County would lose a federal suit filed by Denver Water and that the agency would withdraw its mitigation offer if they delayed a vote.
Denver Water already has the federal approval it needs to raise the dam on South Boulder Creek by 131 feet, and inundate the surrounding forest for 77,000 more acre-feet of storage, nearly tripling capacity.
“This project is bad for the environment, and the mitigation being offered is not sufficient,” Commissioner Claire Levy said, adding that she believes the county did all it could to alter the project impacts.
“I understand people’s disappointment with where we are. The law is not on our side,” she added, and said she did not want county residents to “come up empty handed.”
Boulder County should not be “bullied” by Denver Water, Levy said, and “now it’s up to them to do the right thing” by further mitigating the dam’s impacts. “All projects on this scale are simply obsolete.”
The commissioners wanted Denver Water to go through the county’s existing “1041” land use process, allowed under state law, before construction on the Gross Reservoir expansion begins. But in July, Denver Water sued, saying federal laws superseded Boulder County’s process and that its federal permit required the utility to begin construction by 2022. Boulder County was intentionally slowing down the project, Denver Water argued…
See the full article HERE.
Save the Colorado, an organization that is helping to promote Rights of River local ordinances, fought against this project. Here’s what they say on their blog:
We did everything we could to support the local community, and our partner on the ground in Boulder County, “The Environmental Group”, in this decade-long fight. The project, called the “Moffat Collection System Project” will be a massive expansion of Gross Dam in Boulder County and also divert a new 3.5 billion gallons of water out of the Colorado River every year to attempt to fill Gross Reservoir in Boulder County.
In the end, federal law in the name of the “Federal Power Act” appears to have trumped and pre-empted both the Army Corps of Engineers’ permitting process and Boulder County’s permitting process. In addition, several years ago the larger and more well-known environmental groups…
Read more from Save the Colorado Here.
Photo credit: “Gross Reservoir” by Jeffrey Beall is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0