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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.
Elbert County Developing Its Countywide Water Master Plan
Water planning is an essential tool for counties throughout Colorado.
Elbert County continues the process of developing its Water Master Plan, designed to guide the county’s water policy – including how to balance water security and the substantial current and future growth in the county – for the next 10 years.
“The bottom line for this study is to answer the question, ‘Does the water supply support future growth,?'" said Marc Dettenrieder, Elbert County‟s Director of Community and Economic Development, in a news release.
The overall aim of the water plan is to be able to meet the needs of longtime Elbert County residents, including those in rural areas, and on farms and ranches, that have their own wells.
The goal is to balance those needs with the expanding needs of residents and businesses that are new to the county.
According to the county economic development department, the study that is the backbone of the water plan aims to accomplish three goals:
Provide guidance and solutions for new development in the county within the requirement of a 300-year water supply.
Protect water access for the 8,000 Elbert County homes using wells and the 2,000 additional homes using community water systems.
Integrate the Elbert County plan with other relevant plans.
Elbert County’s plan is in line with the aims of other counties that border Douglas County that are developing a detailed, transparent, and strategic county-wide water plan.
A key theme these neighboring counties share is that they look for “all the above” strategies to solve the inevitable water crisis.
It will be good for the entire region when Douglas County weighs in with its plan – and its vision – for water security going forward.
Recent Headlines
Low Flow: As Colorado River basin runs dry, city pivots on water policy
The Colorado River is the region’s main water source, but experts fear persistent drought related to climate change could close the spigot for many cities in the Western U.S., including Colorado Springs. Seventy percent of Colorado Springs’s water supply currently comes from the Colorado River. But with the basin’s reliability in question, the city is now looking to alternative sources like the Arkansas River.
…“Today, the Colorado Springs Utilities water system can reliably deliver 95,000 acre-feet of water each year,” she {a spokeswoman with Colorado Springs Utilities} said, noting that the 5-year average of water use between 2018 and 2023 is 70,000 acre-feet annually.
The utility’s water resources managers took climate variability into account as they developed the most recent 50-year plan in 2017, which is guiding the city’s water use needs and policies through 2070.
Gortz {manager of water resources at Colorado Springs Utilities} said that the city uses 25 storage reservoirs spanning from the Continental Divide in the high country to more familiar local reservoirs like Catamount Reservoir on Pikes Peak. There are projects currently underway from Colorado Springs Utilities to upgrade and preserve many of those reservoirs. By improving the reservoir infrastructure Colorado Springs Utilities can increase usable water yield for the city due to the lack of new water rights being granted along the Colorado River.
Many people on the Front Range depend on water from the Denver Basin. But the underground supply isn’t infinite
In El Paso County many people drink ancient water drawn from million-dollar wells. Their water comes from the Denver Basin, a geological formation that stretches along the Front Range from Colorado Springs to Greeley and east to Limon.
… So Denver Basin water is considered nonrenewable groundwater and the populations using it are growing. Neither Denver Water nor Colorado Springs Utilities rely on the Denver Basin to serve their customers, but some of the big deep commercial wells that serve other Front Range municipal and community water systems are starting to become less productive.
… A Denver Basin well can go some 2,000 feet deep and cost millions of dollars. U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Suzanne Paschke of the Colorado Water Science Centerhas studied the Denver Basin aquifers. She said models show some areas throughout the entire basin going dry in the next 50 years depending on growth, the amount of pumping and availability of other water resources.
Should access to drinking water be at the top of the global agenda?
Former U.K. defense secretary cautions that water scarcity looms with geopolitical risks, calls for urgent global action
Dr. Liam Fox says having clean drinking water could soon become the greatest problem facing the world in the 21st century, but it doesn’t have to be.
…Following his service in political office, Fox has dedicated his time and research to water. He cautions that water will become the biggest problem facing the 21st century if we, as a global population, don’t begin looking at long-term solutions.
