The City Council of Fort Collins passed a resolution last week that formally declares their opposition to a water management plan that would divert massive amounts of water from the Poudre River and create one or two new reservoirs in northern Colorado.
The resolution outlines numerous issues with the current plan (Northern Integrated Supply Project, or NISP) and the way environmental, financial and civic impacts have been assessed in the latest Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Study (SDEIS) completed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Several dozen people stood to speak at the meeting on Sept. 1, almost unanimously agreeing with the Council’s opinion that they are unable “to support NISP as currently described in the SDEIS,” and do “support … further improvement of the SDEIS and, ultimately, the conceptual mitigation plan.”
Indeed, Fort Collins isn’t against some sort of plan being worked up, and the Council made a point to say that the SDEIS showed marked improvement from the first Environmental Impact Study on the project in 2004.
NISP is the product of a conglomerate of 15 water providers in the area, including the Fort Collins Loveland Water District, the cities of Lafayette and Frederick, and other water districts and municipalities. The group submitted a plan to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to secure that water, and in 2004 the Corps returned with the original impact study.
The current plan, which Fort Collins rejected, includes the construction of two reservoirs, the Glade and Galeton reservoirs, which would have a combined capacity of about 200,000 acre-feet. The water would be pumped into the reservoirs via a canal built from the Poudre.
Environmental groups like Save the Poudre have jumped in to protest NISP, citing concerns with everything from the environmental impact that effectively draining the Poudre River by up to 66 percent would have, to the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers didn’t perform due diligence in their SDEIS. Conservation and efficiency of water use, ideas that Save the Poudre says would be viable alternatives to the reservoirs, was a key tenet of a plan ultimately dismissed by the Army Corps.
But the weight that Fort Collins’ opposition throws into the battle is a blow to the project’s proponents who were hoping for an expedient outcome. It may also be the last time the City is able to comment on the project, they believe. In this resolution, the City Council outlined what they say is the key issue: draining the Poudre River more than nature already does will damage it permanently.
“The Poudre River literally dries up at certain times of the year in Fort Collins because of upstream diversions; and furthermore, its flows through town have been reduced by approximately two-thirds of historical, pre-water development flows,” the City writes in its summary. “NISP would reduce flows by an additional 21 percent … . These significant flow reductions are damaging to the long-term health of the River because flows are the single-most important factor in sustaining habitat as well as a river channel that can handle flood events, among other values.”
Adding onto that thought, the City takes issue with the Corps’ “overall narrative,” that no matter what happens with NISP, damage to the Poudre River is inevitable and irreversible.
“The health of the Poudre River can be stabilized, maintained and improved through deliberate, thoughtful and strategic actions similar to those the City has been taking,” the City writes.
The City also points out that NISP will only meet the demands of the 15 participants until 2030, when a new plan is going to need to be devised to supply more water.
Fort Collins’ opposition to the SDEIS came down to several key points: the lack of a no-action alternative, water quality concerns, overall river health, fish and wildlife sustainability, air quality and recreation.
First, the lack of a no-action alternative violates rules the Corps must follow in impact studies. A noaction alternative provides the basis against which all plans are judged financially, environmentally and civically. To be considered a true “no-action alternative,” it must not depend on a federal permit or construction (that is, action), and the Corps’ current plan does require a federal permit.
The next big issue Fort Collins takes with NISP is water quality. First, they are concerned that reducing water flow through the City by as much as 66 percent in peak months could drastically affect how they can treat wastewater. Small changes to water quantity and temperature “can have significant impacts to both compliance with stream standards and the bottom line of Fort Collins.”
The City also points out that diversion of water from the Poudre River would undermine efforts they have made to improve the health of the fish population and national environment. Trout populations would decrease due to the lack of “flushing flows,” which are natural river surges that support the trout’s life cycle.
And the last point about water is that NISP could substantially affect drinking water, or at least, bring quality down. Fort Collins gets to this conclusion by saying that water diverted elsewhere, and not through the city’s current system, will require more resources (which the City may not have) to adequately treat water.
“If Glade Reservoir water is of poorer quality, which is expected due to the size and composition of the project, the quality of the City’s water supplies obtained through the PVP will be degraded and may require additional treatment costs associated with total organic carbon (TOC) and solids removal,” the City writes.
The City also notes that recreation, a major draw for the area, could be greatly reduced by a diversion of Poudre River water. They estimate that the days on which kayaks, canoes and tubes can traverse the river would be reduced by 50 percent.
And, the City claims that pumping water to new reservoirs would consume a lot of electricity, even though the plan Fort Collins supports (to divert water downstream from Fort Collins to another new reservoir) would require as much, if not more power.
Eric Wilkinson, general manager at Northern Water, issued a statement expressing dismay at Fort Collins’ decision not to support the plan as it is currently laid out.
“NISP participants have spent $12 million on the detailed SDEIS process,” Wilkinson wrote. “Under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers, several expertly qualified independent consultants have thoroughly studied all aspects of NISP as reflected by the funding provided by the NISP participants to complete those studies. Two different consultant teams have independently studied the issues surrounding water and wastewater treatment and have concluded that NISP will have little to no impact on the City of Fort Collins’ operations. As a result of these efforts, we had sincerely hoped that staff would have had a more favorable opinion of those analyses and of the SDEIS as a whole.”
Now the Army Corps will begin work on a final environmental impact study, with a pending completion date sometime in 2016. A final permit decision on the project has a deadline of 2017, but Gary Wockner of Save the Poudre says it could be another 10 years before a final determination is made about the fate of NISP.
