This story first appeared in a Colorado Community Media newspaper. Support CCM’s neighborhood news.
The city of Thornton formally went to court against the Weld County Board of Commissioners after the board denied the city’s application to build a water pipeline through the county.
The board’s decision, “exceeds its jurisdiction and/or is contrary to law, misinterprets and misapplies its criteria, and was arbitrary and capricious because its findings lack competent evidence to support the BOCC’s denial,” read the complaint filed Wednesday in Weld County District Court.
As Thornton nears its deadline to construct a pipeline from a reservoir near Fort Collins, the quickest and most direct way for the city to get approval for a Weld County pipeline is through the courts, rather than submitting a whole new application. The city asks in the complaint for a district court judge to intervene and overturn the board’s decision.
Thornton started the process for the Weld County section of the Thornton Water Project in 2015. In 2018, the city formally submitted its application to build a pipeline through 34 miles of unincorporated county land. The city then went before the county’s planning commission twice and the board of commissioners four times. That fourth meeting, May 5, is when the board unanimously voted to deny the application.
The denial and the court proceedings are additional setbacks for Thornton in its effort to complete the pipeline’s total 75 miles from a Water Supply and Storage Company (WSSC) reservoir by 2025. The city is engaged in a separate legal battle — currently in the Colorado Court of Appeals — with the Larimer County Board of Commissioners, who denied a similar application from Thornton in 2019. The complaint Thornton filed in Weld County is the same kind that it filed in Larimer.
The city has already installed six miles of pipeline in other municipalities it has reached agreements with, including Windsor and Johnstown.