Platte Valley Water Partnership [PVWP]
PVWP is a partnership of Parker Water, Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District and Castle Rock, led by Parker Water.
Parker Water [PWSD] acquired 23,000 acre feet of water in 2004 by the purchase of 4,000 acres of high priority, irrigated farm land adjacent to the Platte River near Sterling in Logan County. Many of these rights date back to the 1800's. Most of these water rights have gone through the long process of being adjudicated from agricultural to municipal use.
Instead of drying up Parker Water's Logan County farms and piping the water to Douglas County, by working with Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District [LSPWCD] a unique concept was developed to:
-
Retain water unnecessarily escaping to Nebraska
-
Capture and store Peak Spring and Fall Platte river flows
-
Ensure adequate irrigation water for LSPWCD farms in June and July
-
Efficiently move equivalent amounts of PWSD water to Douglas county
-
Allow participating farmers to sell a limited amount of water to Parker Water
The Platte Valley Water Partnership [PVWP] is an innovative, long-term renewable water supply solution that will benefit both 400,000 acres of agricultural land and municipal communities in the South Platte River Basin and participating Douglas County water providers. After over a decade of working together, the PVWP was formally launched in 2021 between LSPWCD and PWSD to capture and store available South Platte River water when available for use when needed.
Flows on the Platte vary annually depending on factors such as speed of snow melt. For example in 2023 as much as 30,000 acre feet of additional water could have been moved to Parker Water's 75,000 acre foot Rueter Hess reservoir, had PVWP been in existence. In 2022 there would have been none but in 2021 there would have been 20,000 acre feet. Annual PWSD need is currently about 8,000 acre feet per year.
The partnership’s unique approach will provide both farms and cities with much-needed water. The project will use new and existing infrastructure to capture and store renewable South Platte River water flowing mostly in the spring and during storm events. This is water that currently leaves Colorado in quantities that exceed interstate compact agreements. The plan includes a 70,000 acre foot reservoir in Washington County to match flows to need.
The partners see this as a unique opportunity to optimize existing and future renewable water resources, using newly constructed shared infrastructure to set a precedent for a mutually-beneficial relationship between agricultural and Front Range water communities in Colorado. Unlike other water plans this project promotes agriculture instead of buying the water and drying up land, farms and communities.
Today PVWP has moved from an idea to an in process reality in the Design/Engineering stage with Jacobs Engineering coordinating plans for permitting, write of way acquisition etc. Real estate for the diversion structure has been acquired and Geo-techincal work on the proposed 70,000 acre foot reservoir site has been performed. At the March 27 meeting of the PWSD board, purchase of land required for the reservoir was authorized and should be completed over the next few months.
The next critical date is an August water court hearing.
PWSD’s current water resources are sufficient to meet existing demands, but with a population that’s projected to double by build-out, and with the Denver Basin groundwater supplies diminishing over time, PWSD’s ultimate goal is to diversify its water resources portfolio to be comprised of at least 75% renewable water in drought years.
With the construction of a shared project infrastructure, LSPWCD will be able to capture, store, and use its water resources more effectively for irrigation purposes. These improvements will help to optimize operations necessary to meet their members’ needs.
We estimate a cost of approximately $880 million for the entire Platte Valley Water Partnership project.
$560 million has been built into PWSD’s long-term planning and rate structure and would be adequate to complete the first phase. We are currently in discussions with additional entities who may be interested in participating in some portion, or all, of the project. *
Nebraska Perkins County Canal Project
Recently Nebraska has announced intentions to revive a canal project, in the 1922 Nebraska/Colorado water compact that would move from the South Platte at Ovid, (near Julesburg) Colorado to Nebraska. Many assumptions in the Nebraska proposal are subject to challenge. Current proposed Colorado Platte projects such as PVWP would still allow as much as 78,000 acre feet of water for Nebraska irrigation.
* More information: http://pwsd.org/3393/Platte-Valley-Water-Partnership
