Delays in legislation authorizing the Preferred Options Storage Plan have entities that get water from the Arkansas Basin looking to other plans, according to The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
With plans to look at enlarging Lake Pueblo shelved for the foreseeable future, other options are moving ahead. Slowly. Just as no one has ever been sure that Lake Pueblo can be safely enlarged, the alternatives to enlargement are equally uncertain. Water projects take years to plan and complete. Planners are moving more cautiously than ever in a time when water quality, recreational and environmental concerns must be considered...
In the short-term, Colorado Springs is already pursuing a 40-year "if-and-when" contract to store 28,000 acre-feet in Lake Pueblo...
The uncertainty has prompted U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., to step in. Salazar offered a plan Saturday to study the proposed PSOP enlargement of Lake Pueblo and Turquoise Lake, along with a multipurpose dam on Fountain Creek, that could proceed without the IGAs. Water providers just learned of his plan and will need time to consider it, however...
Excess capacity contracts with the Bureau of Reclamation give water users the opportunity to store water in Lake Pueblo if and when it is not full of Fryingpan-Arkansas Project water brought over from the Fryingpan River through the Boustead Tunnel at Turquoise Lake. That's most of the time, since Lake Pueblo rarely fills - on average there is about 131,000 acre-feet of space available in Lake Pueblo, or half of its non-flood capacity. Before the drought of 2002, Reclamation excess capacity contracts averaged about 15,000 acre-feet annually. Since then, the average has grown to more than 25,000 acre-feet annually and requests grow every year. In 2006, Reclamation determined up to 80,000 acre-feet of water could be stored without a significant environmental impact over the next five years...
The Pueblo Board of Water Works obtained the first long-term excess capacity contract in 2000 with a 25-year deal that will eventually allow up to 15,000 acre-feet. Aurora just completed negotiations for a 40-year contract for 10,000 acre-feet of storage, which it would use to move water out of the valley...
The other part of PSOP was the excess capacity plan, which appears to be progressing without clear direction from Congress. PSOP legislation in 2004 sought to legitimize Aurora's place in the valley, which Southeastern earlier had questioned. Legislation introduced this year by U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., suggested just the opposite - that Fry-Ark legislation never intended the project as a vehicle for moving water out of the valley. Even within the valley, it's not clear who can or cannot use the lake to store water and under what terms. Most users store under year-to-year contracts rather than a long-term plan...
Pueblo West had hoped to gain 5,500 acre-feet of firm space, a one-year supply, in Lake Pueblo enlargement. Now, [Don Saling, manager of the Pueblo West Metro District] is looking at a long-term contract as his best option. It has relied on one-year if-and-when contracts since 1999, a process Saling calls "tedious."
[Colorado Springs] already has spent $11 million on environmental studies for its Southern Delivery System, a $1 billion-plus plan to supply Colorado Springs water needs until 2046, and could face another round of environmental expenses on the excess-capacity contract. Nevertheless, the city of 400,000 is planning to apply for the long-term contract before year's end and wants to have SDS online by 2012. Initially, the 28,000 acre-foot contract will be sufficient for SDS, or any of the alternatives under review by Reclamation. However, Colorado Springs hoped to gain 30,000 acre-feet from Lake Pueblo enlargement and will look at other options if that plan stays on the shelf, [Gary Bostrom, water supply general manager for Colorado Springs Utilities] said...
For Fountain, a partner with Colorado Springs in SDS, PSOP lost much of its attraction three years ago when Larry Patterson took over as utilities manager. One of Patterson's first steps was to reduce participation in SDS from 14 percent to 3 percent. At the same time, the city withdrew its request for 10,000 acre-feet under potential enlargement of Lake Pueblo...
Fountain relies on 50 percent groundwater and 50 percent surface water to serve a booming population of more than 21,000. Some of the ditch rights it is buying are used to augment flows reduced by groundwater pumping. The trade-off was that Fountain had to build a reverse osmosis plant to treat water, also expensive, but more reliable than the timely completion of SDS and PSOP, Patterson said...
The Pueblo Board of Water Works continues to work toward expansion of Clear Creek Reservoir as an alternative to the 5,000 acre-feet it hoped to gain through Lake Pueblo expansion. The water court filing for the expansion came shortly after PSOP failed in Congress for the fourth year in 2004...
Meanwhile, the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District continues to contest Reclamation's ability to contract with Aurora - one of the biggest loose ends as PSOP legislation stalls. Lower Ark has a 400 acre-foot temporary storage contract, but isn't eligible for a long-term contract because much of the district is outside the tightly drawn Southeastern boundaries.
