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As County leaders, we must protect our region. Our quality of life is directly connected to our commitment to build a tomorrow that preserves the best of today. This vision includes protecting our natural resources, utilizing our county’s resources in a fiscally-smart manner, and wisely planning for our future. Thank you for standing with us.
Continuing Reliance on Non-Renewable Water is a Non-Starter for Douglas County
Widespread concerns, up and down the Front Range, about the long-term adequacy of water supplies – particularly regarding the non-renewable Denver Basin aquifers – are placing a needed focus on the need for renewable water.
Aurora, along with El Paso and Elbert counties, are focusing on solutions to reduce reliance on the Denver Basin aquifers, a strategy that is universally agreed must be a priority.
“The aquifers in the Denver Basin are diminishing over time, leading some water providers on the north side of El Paso County to plan for other sources of water.”
The story noted that El Paso County has had a county water master plan in place since 2019, which states that county groundwater will be short 18 billion gallons of water by 2060 “if water supplies aren’t increased by more than one-third.”
Aurora Water is making similar moves, acquiring water rights that will allow it to tap into additional sources on a limited basis, telling media that “water supplies are getting more and more difficult to ensure for the future.”
Looking at a wide range of renewable and sustainable strategies that go beyond successful, but limited, conservation and reuse efforts is vitally important.
This is the tactic being pursued by Douglas County’s neighboring cities and counties.
Maintaining an open-minded and “all of the above” approach to Douglas County’s water future will be key to ending the continuing, and scientifically unsupportable, over-reliance on non-renewable water.
Recent Headlines
Water conflict: Colorado Springs Utilities, others say Aurora in violation of 2003 pact
…Aurora Water is spending $80 million on a ranch of about 5,000 acres near Rocky Ford and its associated water rights. An Aurora presentation showed it estimates it is paying about $9,600 per acre-foot of water. The purchase could yield 18,000 to 22,500 acre-feet every 10 years, Aurora city documentation states. An acre-foot of water can serve about four families for a year in Colorado
Springs.
"Providing the drinking water for the future of Aurora is really important." she said."Water supplies are getting more and more difficult to ensure for the future."
...In this case, Aurora is facing opposition to its purchase from water districts in the valley and Colorado Springs Utilities.
Less water, fewer farmers: the future of agriculture on the Ogallala Aquifer
…That is the Ogallala Aquifer. A vast, but uneven reserve of freshwater stored under the earth.
The people who live on top of the aquifer pump it out of the ground. More than 90 percent of Ogallala water is used for agriculture, and that water transformed the high plains dust bowl of eastern Colorado into highly productive farmland.
But according to Meagan Schipanski, an associate professor at Colorado State University and Co-Director of the Ogallala Water Coordinated Agriculture Project, the aquifer has its limits. The water has been over-allocated for decades. The current drought is exacerbating the shortage.
“That water is a nonrenewable resource,” Schipanski said, “we're going to use it faster than it can recharge itself.”
Hawaii is "on the verge of a greater catastrophe," locals say, as water crisis continues
...Despite being surrounded by seemingly endless ocean, freshwater on Oahu, the third-largest of Hawaii's six major islands, is not easily accessible. The island relies on an underground aquifer for its water supply. Replenishing that aquifer is a decades-long natural process, as it takes a single drop of water roughly 25 years to make it there from the sky.
