A century ago, water planning was all about floods and farms.
The era was marked with a spirit of optimism that verdant fields would replace desert lands, floods would be harnessed and cities would grow.
“I expect that these waters in the mountains, instead of being a menace to the people upon the plains, will be their source of strength and their source of wealth,” William Jennings Bryan told an international water conference in Pueblo in 1910. The problem then, as it is now, is that the water just wasn’t there.
A semi-arid region where the average annual rainfall is less than 20 inches was not readily recognized as an agricultural mecca.
In most years as it does now, water came in a rush when snow melted in spring, during summer monsoons and in many years would stop late in the growing season, when many crops were ready for harvest. In the worst years, no water came at all.
“Nature gave Colorado two valuable resources: an abundance of water and vast tracts of fertile and arable land,” said the late Harold Christy, a CF&I water engineer who helped form the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District. “She gave us these great assets but did not logically locate them practical use. She left the job of consolidation to the hand of man.”
The solution was to move water from one side of the mountains to the other and store it for when it was needed. The state Legislature began looking at ways to do that as early as 1889.
The 50-year span from 1920-70 would mark an era of projects designed to fulfill that vision in Eastern Colorado.
At first, moving water across mountains mostly involved digging ditches across mountain passes. The earliest effort still running is the Grand Ditch, completed in the 1890s, in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park.
Many other ditches were dug by farmers looking for a way to make water available throughout the growing season. As the cities have grown, they have acquired many of those systems after irrigators found them expensive to maintain. Pueblo, for instance, acquired the Ewing, Wurtz and Columbine ditches in Lake County in the early 1950s to cope with water shortages at the time.
Engineers also were already toying with tunnels in the early 1900s.
An early large tunnel project devoted solely to water was the Gunnison-Uncompahgre Tunnel completed in 1909, which was built by the Bureau of Reclamation to move water from one sub-basin of the Colorado River to another, and later transferred to a local district. Similarly, the Laramie-Poudre Tunnel, completed in 1911, brought water from the North Platte into the South Platte basin in Northern Colorado.
Rail tunnels, like the Carlton Tunnel near Leadville that later became the diversion tunnel for the Busk-Ivanhoe system, or Denver’s Moffat Tunnel, were later used as ways to move water.
Seeing the need
In Pueblo, after the flood of 1921, community leaders began talking about the need for a supplemental water project that would help farmers and control devastating flood waters. They worked diligently for the next 40 years, until the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project became a reality in 1962.
In the meantime, there were dramatic events that both paved the way for and delayed the Arkansas Valley’s biggest water project.
In the early 1930s, the Twin Lakes Canal and Reservoir Co. and National Sugar Co. proposed a plan to drill a tunnel through the Rockies near Independence Pass. In the throes of a drought and the Great Depression, with concern from the West Slope and over the objections of other western states, the farmers were able to see the transmountain diversion become a reality in 1935.
The tunnel was an engineering marvel that is still impressive. Previously, tunnels through the mountains were used as a means for trains to more quickly move across the country. In fact, the Carlton Tunnel, part of the Busk-Ivanhoe system, and Denver’s Moffat Tunnel were railroad projects later converted for use as water conduits.
While the Twin Lakes tunnel was coming into use, investigations into the possibility of developing a Gunnison-Arkansas Project were being studied. In the 1930s, Gun-Ark was seen as more than just a supplemental water-supply program. It was a plan to bring new land under irrigation and provide for growth of communities.
Frank Hoag Jr., late publisher of the The Pueblo Chieftain and Star Journal, recalled in a later interview that a story he wrote about an initial appropriation for the Gun-Ark project was read by a Gunnison editor and stopped by U.S. Rep. Edward Taylor, a powerful West Slope congressman who fiercely protected Colorado River basin interests.
“Ed Taylor went to the White House and had that application stopped,” Hoag
said in 1974.
Setting the mold
Colorado’s largest transmountain diversion, the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, was just beginning in the 1930s. The economic times and weather emphasized the importance of such a project on a grand scale, and it had political support from such men as Greeley newspaper publisher Charles Hanson, the “Godfather of the C-BT, and Sen. Alva Adams, a Pueblo lawyer for whom the 13-mile Alva B. Adams Tunnel is named.
Authorized in 1937, the project set the template for transmountain diversions.
The structure of government for water projects was set. The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District was formed at the time to oversee the C-BT project. The Colorado River Conservation District would advocate for the interests of the West Slope. The Colorado Water Conservation Board was established by the legislature to balance those interests.
The give and take of competing interests were also addressed by the structures of the project beyond the tunnel that brings water through the mountains.
Green Mountain Reservoir was established as a means of compensatory storage for the West Slope. Lake Granby was formed by Granby Dam and fed by a pumpback from Willow Creek. Numerous reservoirs were constructed on the East Slope, fed by a system of ditches and pipelines.
There were also internal conflicts between federal agencies, as many concerns were brought up by the National Park Service.
Finally, the project embraced multiple functions still important to all federal projects. Power generation, wildlife, recreation and other uses were incorporated into the design.
The tunnel was completed in 1944, and most parts of the project were in place by the late 1940s. Northern Colorado was able to weather the drought years of the 1950s with the C-BT project, while other parts of the state were still working on projects.
Denver, Colorado Springs and Aurora spent the 1940s and ’50s developing transmountain projects that relied on municipal funding.
Still, all had to overcome bitter resistance from West Slope interests, legal challenges and meet federal requirements.
The 23-mile-long Roberts Tunnel that feeds Denver is the longest underground water diversion in the state.
Denver already was receiving water through the Moffat Tunnel, and had spent nearly 20 years planning the tunnel when construction began in 1946.
The tunnel would not be holed through until 1962.
Denver had to move the entire town of Dillon to build Dillon Reservoir, completed in 1963.
After World War II, Colorado Springs began looking for water to meet its increased growth.
In 1953, the city started work on the Hoosier Tunnel, which brings water from the Blue River to Montgomery Reservoir in South Park. From there, it is brought into Colorado Springs through a 70-mile pipeline.
In the mid-1950s, after an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Twin Lakes from Crowley County farmers, Colorado Springs teamed with Aurora to begin the Homestake Project, which brings water from the Eagle River basin into the Arkansas Basin, sending Aurora’s share into Spinney Mountain Reservoir and carrying Colorado Springs’ portion through an 80-mile pipeline.
The Homestake Project was completed in 1967, about the time major elements were being planned as part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, creating a piggy-back relationship of shared storage that continues today.
The Fry-Ark Project surfaced as part of the Gun-Ark Project in 1951, when Secretary of Interior Oscar Chapman advocated it to President Harry Truman:
“The waters of the Arkansas River in the Upper Arkansas River Basin are overappropriated, resulting in a serious loss of crop production on presently irrigated farmland. Stabilized agricultural economy in the area requires a supplemental water supply. Additional quantity and better quality of domestic and municipal water is critically needed.”
In 1951, the Fry-Ark Project was seen as a first step to an effort that might eventually bring 185,000 acre-feet to the Arkansas Valley Ñ still substantially less than the C-BT provided to Northern Colorado. Chapman also outlined plans for seven power plants, a West Slope reservoir about one-fourth the size of the present-day Ruedi Reservoir, and water to Colorado Springs, Pueblo and other Arkansas basin cities.
Even at that early date, the benefits of flood control, pollution abatement, environment for fish and wildlife and recreation were mentioned by Chapman.
It took another 10 years of fundraising Ñ selling golden fryingpans in the valley to send folks to Washington to lobby Ñ to make the Fry-Ark Project a reality.
In the process, the West Slope, through Taylor’s formidable apprentice, Rep. Wayne Aspinall, was able both to help make the project a reality and obtain more concessions from Front Range users.
Ruedi Reservoir was enlarged to hold nearly 100,000 acre-feet. There were also concessions made in water rights to guarantee flows on the West Slope. Parts of the project, as designed, were later not constructed because they were in wilderness areas.
Most significantly, from the point of view of those in the Gunnison River basin, that portion of the project was taken off the table. Aspinall successfully fought in Congress for Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal Reservoir while in Congress and kept nearly all of the Gunnison’s waters out of the statewide equation.
Subsequent efforts, led by Palmer Lake developer Dave Miller, to divert Gunnison River waters for use elsewhere in the state have fallen flat in court, the Legislature and even in the hallways where water deals are started.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy came to Pueblo to sign legislation authorizing the Fry-Ark Project. It would be a dozen years before water moved through the Boustead Tunnel into the Arkansas River basin.
And the wait continues for another major project to be built.
Here are diversions from the West Slope to the Front Range and the year water was appropriated for each:
STRUCTURE APPROP. DATE USE AVE. DIVERTED. Grand River Ditch 1890 Ag.-Muni. 20,000 af Moffat Tunnel 1921 Denver 53,000 Twin Lakes 1930 Muni. 38,000 Adams Tunnel 1935 Ag.-Muni. 205,000 Roberts Tunnel 1946 Denver 61,000 Hoosier Tunnel 1952 Colorado Springs 9,600 Homestake Tunnel 1956 Muni. 25,000 Boustead Tunnel 1957 Ag.-Muni. 55,000
Figures are in acre-feet, as of 2006. An acre-foot of water is 325,851 gallons and can support 2-3 homes or about half an acre (consumptive use) for crops.