Denver Water

Denver Water
Agency overview
Formed1918
Preceding agency
  • Denver Union Water Company
TypeWater infrastructure
HeadquartersDenver Water Administration Building
1600 W. 12th Ave.
Denver, Colorado
39°44′08″N 105°00′36″W / 39.7355°N 105.0099°W / 39.7355; -105.0099
Employees1,160 employees
Annual budgetUS$700 million (fy2023)
Agency executive
  • Alan Salazar, CEO/Manager
Websitewww.denverwater.org
Footnotes
[1]

Denver Water is a water utility that operates as a public agency serving the City and County of Denver, Colorado, and a portion of its surrounding suburbs. Established in 1918, the utility is funded by water rates and new tap fees.[2] It is Colorado's oldest and largest water utility.[3]

Overview

The challenge for any city in Colorado is the arid character of the countryside. Denver and its suburbs are an artificial oasis in a landscape that would otherwise be nearly without trees or bushes.[4] The amount of water is also quite variable, both from year to year and within each year. The greatest water flows happen in the spring and early summer as the mountain snowpack melts. In order to have water in drier times dams have been constructed to hold back water from wet periods and transmountain diversions from the wetter Colorado Western Slope to the Front Range urban corridor and Eastern Plains have been created.[3]

Denver Water is an independent agency that derives its authority and existence from Article X of the Charter of the City and County of Denver.[5] Though owned and employed by Denver, the property and personnel controlled by the Board of Water Commissioners are referred to as Denver Water.[6] Though they have also, at times, been called the Denver Water Board, the Water Board, and the Denver Water Department. Historically, it was also called the Denver Municipal Water Works in its earliest years.[7] The agency sets it own employment rules subject to the Denver City Charter and Article XX of the Colorado Constitution governing civil service employees.[8]

Water system

The sources of Denver's water supply are split almost evenly with half coming from west of the Continental Divide and the Colorado River system and half from tributaries of the South Platte River.[9] In a year without water shortages or other issues around 20% of the total comes from the Fraser River and Williams Fork in Grand County.[10] Another 30% comes from the Blue River, also on the west slope and the primary water source in the east is the South Platte River itself, with smaller amounts also being sourced from South Boulder Creek, Ralston Creek, and Bear Creek.[11]

There are 17 reservoirs, lakes, or storage complexes that are owned by Denver Water or where it has a right to a portion of the water stored. The largest of these is the Dillon Reservoir with a capacity of 257,304 acre⋅ft (317,380,000 m3).[11] As of 2024 an overwhelming majority of 90% of the storage capacity of the system feeds into the southern collection system. The 10% of storage in the northern system is collected through the Moffat Tunnel and most of the storage is in Gross Reservoir.[12]

History

Private companies

The history of Denver Water is rooted in the private companies, personal water diversions, and government regulation that preceded its creation. The city of Denver itself was only founded in 1859 and at that time the high plains of the shortgrass prairie were widely regarded an "arid desert" as Francis Parkman described it in 1849. Traveling to Bent's Fort he described a water deficient landscape where, "the only vegetation was a few tufts of short grass, dried and shriveled by the heat."[13] The first residents of the Denver area drank water directly from nearby creeks and rivers, using buckets to transport it to residences and businesses.[14]

This was not adequate for a settlement of any size so prior to the creation of Denver Water more than a dozen private water companies were founded in Denver, most of them short lived. The first of these was the Auraria and Cherry Creek Water Company. It was founded in 1859 soon after settlement began, but it made no progress in building any ditches to provide water. The second was the Capitol Hydraulic Company, which was granted a charter by the Kansas Territory legislature in 1860 and began construction the same year. Progress was slow and in 1865 businessman John W. Smith founded the Platte Water Company which bought out Capitol Hydraulic and moved the source upstream on the Platte River.[15] By 1867 the City Ditch had been completed by the company and was delivering water to what is now the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The ditch delivered water to Smith Lake in what became Washington Park.[14] Initially the work was done by hand, but an oxen powered rotary canal builder and railroad excavator was employed later in the construction.[16]

The Highline Canal flume over Plum Creek c. 1882 photographed by William Henry Jackson (1843-1942)

The construction of irrigation systems rapidly transformed Denver and surrounding areas. By 1865 visitors like Albert Richardson reported that Colorado agriculture was quite successful.[17] Ornamental lawns, gardens, and trees were planted in the 1860s and 1870s with visitors reporting on their beauty and success in contrast to earlier narratives of the dry and desolate appearance of the city.[18]

Though successful, the Platte River Company also frequently fell short of expected water deliveries. Critics thought the company had not correctly engineered its system while the company blamed low water in the river. Seeing an opening for competition, businessman James Archer formed the Denver City Water Company in November 1870. The company built a system of pipes fed by a pumping station built near the mouth of Cherry Creek where it empties into the South Platte River.[19] With two pumps built by Holly Manufacturing, this first pumping station was capable of providing 2.5 million US gallons (9,500,000 L) of water each day.[16]

Because the well supplying the pumping station was in the middle of the city, the water became contaminated by the growing population. Between 1879 and 1896 there were at least six major outbreaks of water borne typhoid fever. In response the company built a filtration plant using sand beds in 1889. Together with the 1897 typhoid vaccine and introduction of water chlorination outbreaks of the disease in Denver became rare in the early 20th century.[20]

While private companies were the rule, concerns regarding the stability and cost of supply were growing. In 1874 the territorial legislature amended the Denver city charter allowing it to, "own water works of any description."[21] This enabled the city to purchase Smith's City Ditch in 1882 to continue providing irrigation water to the city's lawns and trees.[22]

Internal squabbling at the Denver Water Company also lead two of its founders, Walter Cheesman and David Moffat, to leave and found the Citizens' Water Company in 1889.[23] This new corporation began purchasing agricultural land and its senior water rights and building works far upstream of the city at the entrance to the Platte Canyon in Jefferson County. A drought in 1890 reduced the flow in the Platte and Citizen's responded with new infrastructure projects for storage including the Ashland Avenue Reservoir, the Alameda Avenue Tank, and Marston Lake.[21]

The competition between Citizens' Water Company and the Denver Water Co. was fierce, but ended with victory for Citizen's in 1894. The renamed Denver Union Water Company purchased the rival company's assets out of receivership and was thereafter the only water provider in Denver.[24]

Denver Union Water Company

Cheeseman Lake and Dam with water flowing over the spillway, photographed in 1926

The new monopoly did continue with improvements to its infrastructure. The Capitol Hill Reservoir and it pump station were completed in 1899.[25] In order to store more spring runoff for the drier parts of the year plans were made to build a dam and reservoir in the Platte Canyon.[22] The location selected by the company, unlike San Francisco's O'Shaughnessy Dam or the Los Angeles Aqueduct, was neither a beloved natural wonder or settled by farmers so there was no controversy surrounding its construction.[26] The company applied for the needed permissions in 1894 and construction started in the spring of 1899.[27] The construction on the dam was almost complete when spring floods came in 1900. On May 3 the earth fill dam was overtopped and swept away.[28] Work almost immediately began on an improved hybrid arch-gravity design for Cheesman Dam. The second dam was also constructed of masonry where the first had been an earth fill design faced with concrete and steel.[29] Construction of the dam was finished in 1905. At 221 feet in height it was then the tallest dam in the world, a status it would hold for the next seven years.[30]

Moffat had continued to be a major force behind Denver Union Water, but his project to build the Denver and Salt Lake Railway pressed for more funds and he began to try to sell the company to the city. Denver was interested but a price could not be agreed upon.[31] While residents recognized the value of the infrastructure that has been built by the company, they also resented the corruption that had allowed Cheesman and Moffat to acquire valuable natural resources and monopolize the provision of a necessity to the people.[32] During the negotiations the city explored attempting to build a new, city owned system instead of the $9 million price offered in 1898.[33] The city engineer thought that the total value of the system to be $3.75 million and the city council offered $4.7 through a bond issued approved by the voters November 29, 1899. This election question was ruled invalid on technical grounds in 1901, but it made the city unable to proceed with either negotiations or construction of its own system. Negotiations began again as the end of the company's franchise approached in 1910. Independent engineers were hired to appraise the company's assets in 1907 and their March 1909 report valued it at $14.4 million. Both the city and the company rejected this independent valuation.[34] Many rounds of offers, rejections, and litigation followed over the next nine years and Moffat died in 1911.[35][31] The final valuation of the system was created by attorney W.J. Chinn. This valuation was disputed by the company which took its case all the way to the US Supreme Court, where the valuation was upheld. This finally cleared the way for the sale.[36]

Denver Water

In 1918, Denver residents voted to form a five-member Board of Water Commissioners and buy the Denver Union Water Company's water system for $14 million, creating Denver Water. From that time on, Denver Water planned and developed a system to meet the needs of the people of Denver and the surrounding areas.[2][14] The papers making the sale official were signed at a midnight meeting, November 1, 1918 by company president Edwin S. Kassler. The city paid $13,923,576 to the shareholders for the assets of the company with $424 left over from its bond issue.[31]

The population of the city was an estimated 257,000 and so the new agency was immediately faced with the need for more water for the city.[37] Denver Water acquired the Antero Reservoir in Park County, Colorado and Highline Canal for $450,000 in 1924.[31]

The need for water was especially pressing during the droughts of the 1930s in Colorado. In the fall of 1931 the reservoirs were completely drained due to low water flows.[38] On 26 March 1934 a dust storm, part of the larger Dust Bowl, swept into Denver. Conservation drives were made, but at the same time plans were made to divert water from western Colorado.[39]

The next project was the building of Eleven Mile Canyon Reservoir which began in 1930 and was completed in 1932.[40] Planning for the project had begun even before the droughts, with the site where the South Fork of South Platte River enters Eleven Mile Canyon being surveyed in 1926. Like Cheesman Reservoir it is a hybrid arch-gravity dam with much of the force of the water being supported by the canyon walls rather than by the dam alone.[41] With the completion of the new reservoir, it replaced Cheesman as the largest storage facility in the system with a capacity of 97,779 acre⋅ft (120,609,000 m3).[42]

Photo of the interior of the Moffat Tunnel under construction, 1927

To expand beyond just the water provided by the South Platte River the pioneer bore of the Moffat Tunnel was eyed to be used as a transmountain water diversion from the Fraser River.[40] Denver, however, was near bankruptcy in the 1930s due to the Great Depression. To fund the project the city applied to the Public Works Administration (PWA) in October of 1933. The Federal Government agreed to donate one million dollars to the project and loan the city the remaining 2.5 million for the project, to be repaid as a lease through city water rates for the next thirty years. On June 19, 1936 water began flowing from the west east through the completed water tunnel.[43] The second part of the project, the Moffat Tunnel Extension Unit, was started in 1935 and completed in 1937. This second tunnel takes the water from the exit of the first tunnel out of Big Dry Creek and into the Ralston Creek watershed for delivery to Denver.[44]

The second transmountain diversion was completed under Jones Pass in 1939 to divert water from the Williams Fork.[44] Today it is known as the Gumlick Tunnel and it continues to direct its water into Clear Creek.[45]

Plans for the even more ambitious Roberts Tunnel were first filed with the Colorado State Engineer in 1927,[46] though it would not start diverting water until 1964.[47] During the Great Depression the land and water rights in and around Dillon, Colorado were purchased by Denver Water for much reduced prices.[46] The biggest obstacles were the legal questions around prior appropriation of the Blue River as a tributary of the Colorado River, but even before they were completed work started on the tunnel on September 17, 1942. In 1955 bonds for $75 million dollars to construct the probject were issued by Denver and after the engineering plans were complete clearing the land started April 22, 1960.[46]

Though even more ambitious projects were still being planned, in the 1950s officials at Denver Water began to think about limits to what was feasible for the agency to provide. The mechanism they decided upon was to announce a geographic limit to the area where they would contract to provide water. In August 1951 this "blue line" went into effect. Inside the line Denver Water would continue to sign year to year contracts to provide water, but it also would not guarantee supply as it was primarily a Denver city agency.[48]

Flash floods between 1996 and 2002 led to erosion and damage to Denver's reservoirs. This erosion was exacerbated by insects and disease in the 1990s that had weakened forests. To address this, Denver Water began replanting mountainsides with drought-resistant trees in order to better maintain its waterways.[49]

Lead service pipes

Lead pipes were used to hook homes to water mains until the World War II era. Although lead pipes were banned in 1971, Denver Water officials estimate that there are between 64,000 and 84,000 homes still being serviced with lead pipes. A $500 million program to replace them is proceeding as of 2021 at the rate of about 5,000 homes a year. Whether a particular address has a lead service line may be searched for on a page on the Denver Water website.[50]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Denver Water Budget 2023.
  2. ^ a b Denver Water 2024.
  3. ^ a b Grace: Water in Colorado.
  4. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 48–49.
  5. ^ Denver Water 2021, p. i, 1.
  6. ^ Denver Water 2021, p. i–ii.
  7. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 78.
  8. ^ Denver Water 2021, p. ii, 61.
  9. ^ Adams 2021 Tap.
  10. ^ Shapiro 2021.
  11. ^ a b Denver Water: Collection System.
  12. ^ Swanson 2021a.
  13. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 20.
  14. ^ a b c Fendt 2020.
  15. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 28–30.
  16. ^ a b Kienast: Early Irrigation in Denver.
  17. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 32.
  18. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 31.
  19. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 34–35.
  20. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 36–37.
  21. ^ a b Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 42–43.
  22. ^ a b Ballast 1995, p. 24.
  23. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 41.
  24. ^ Rudnick 1969, p. 1–2.
  25. ^ Ballast 1995, p. 105.
  26. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 52–53.
  27. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 54, 58.
  28. ^ Arps 1983, p. 52.
  29. ^ Franklin 2011, p. 90.
  30. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 65.
  31. ^ a b c d Arps 1983, p. 53.
  32. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 44–48, 69.
  33. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 71–73.
  34. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 74.
  35. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 75–76.
  36. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 76.
  37. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 79.
  38. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 111.
  39. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 108.
  40. ^ a b Arps 1983, p. 54.
  41. ^ Kleinsorge 1992, p. 76–77.
  42. ^ Grigg 2005, p. 23.
  43. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 116.
  44. ^ a b Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 118.
  45. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 119.
  46. ^ a b c Goodliffe 2009, p. 7–8.
  47. ^ Noel 1997, p. 324–325.
  48. ^ Limerick & Hanson 2012, p. 135.
  49. ^ Velasquez-Manoff 2019.
  50. ^ Swanson 2021b.

Sources

  • Arps, Louisa Ward (1983). Denver in Slices. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press. ISBN 978-0-8040-0840-2. Retrieved March 26, 2024.
  • Ballast, David Kent (1995). The Denver Chronicle : From a Golden Past to a Mile-high Future. Houston, Texas: Gulf Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-88415-201-9. Retrieved March 26, 2024.
  • Franklin, Karmen Lee (2011). Digging the Old West : How Dams and Ditches Sculpted an American landscape. Arvada, Colorado: Franklin Design Bureau. p. 90. ISBN 978-0-615-53148-9. Retrieved March 28, 2024.
  • Goodliffe, Roy (2009). Dillon and Silverthorne. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7385-7016-7. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  • Grigg, Neil (2005). Brown, Karla A. (ed.). Citizen's Guide to Where Your Water Comes From. Denver, Colorado: Colorado Foundation for Water Education. ISBN 978-0-9754075-5-4. Retrieved April 19, 2024.
  • Kleinsorge, Martin G. (1992). Exploring Colorado State Parks. Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. ISBN 978-0-87081-256-9. Retrieved April 19, 2024.
  • Limerick, Patricia Nelson; Hanson, Jason L. (2012). A Ditch in Time : the City, the West, and Water (1st ed.). Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing. ISBN 978-1-55591-366-3. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
  • Noel, Thomas J. (1997). Mile High City : An Illustrated History of Denver (1st ed.). Encinitas, California: Heritage Media Corp. ISBN 978-1-886483-10-1. Retrieved March 27, 2024.
News sources
  • Adams, Jay (June 29, 2021). "Where does your water come from?". Tap. Denver Water. Retrieved April 12, 2024.
  • Fendt, Lindsay (January 2, 2020). "From high in the Rockies to the South Platte, here's where Denver gets its water". Denverite. Retrieved March 9, 2024.
  • Edwards, Nikki (January 17, 2022). "The Gross Reservoir Dam Expansion: Denver Water v. Boulder County". Colorado Engineer. University of Colorado Boulder. Retrieved March 13, 2024.
  • Shapiro, Jakob (July 7, 2021). "Denver Water reduces diversions from Colorado River headwaters, keeps streams flowing on Western Slope". The Denver Post. Retrieved April 12, 2024.
  • Swanson, Conrad (April 12, 2021). "How to ensure Denver's 1.5 million water customers have enough in the future? Expand a reservoir". The Denver Post. Retrieved April 13, 2024.
  • Swanson, Conrad (June 11, 2021). "Denver Water is replacing decades-old toxic lead pipes faster than expected". The Denver Post. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved March 22, 2024. In late 2019. the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved Denver Water's replacement plan on a trial basis. The idea is to map out and replace all the lead service lines in town within 15 years and at an estimated cost of about $500 million.
  • Velasquez-Manoff, Moises; Khosravani, Andrew (April 25, 2019). "Can Humans Help Trees Outrun Climate Change?". New York Times. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
Web sources
  • Grace, Stephen. "Water in Colorado". Colorado Encyclopedia. History Colorado. Retrieved April 6, 2024.
  • Kienast, Kate Lee. "Early Irrigation in Denver". Colorado Encyclopedia. History Colorado. Archived from the original on March 24, 2023. Retrieved March 13, 2024.
  • Rudnick, Sherwin (1969). "A Calendar of the Papers of Denver: Water Supply Controversy,1909 -1914" (PDF). University of Denver Institute of Archival Studies. Retrieved March 23, 2024.
  • "About Us". Denver Water. 2024. Archived from the original on March 4, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
  • "Operating Rules of the Board of Water Commissioners City and County of Denver" (PDF). Denver Water. June 9, 2021. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  • "Collection System". Denver Water. 2024. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
  • "History". Denver Water. 2024. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
  • "2023 Approved Budget" (PDF). Denver Water. Retrieved March 22, 2024.

External links

  • Official website
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