Fort Morgan has never owned its water supplies. The small farm town on the Eastern Plains has always leased water from whoever had some to spare.
But with the recent $100 million settlement of a lawsuit that will allow construction of the $2 billion Northern Integrated Supply Project, or NISP, to move forward, Fort Morgan’s 10,564 residents for the first time will own the water that flows from their taps, according to City Manager Brent Nation.
“It has been our intention all along to own our water,” Nation said. “With this settlement, we can finally move forward. It’s a good thing for us.”
This Fresh Water News story is a collaboration between The Colorado Sun and Water Education Colorado. It also appears at wateredco.org.
Fifteen water districts and cities in northern Colorado banded together to build the massive project, which will take water from the Cache la Poudre River and create two dams and reservoirs and a sprawling pipeline system.
Participants include Fort Collins-Loveland Water District, Erie, Fort Morgan, Left Hand Water District, Central Weld County Water District, Windsor, Frederick, Lafayette, Morgan County Quality Water District, Firestone, Dacono, Evans, Fort Lupton, Severance and Eaton.
When completed, sometime after 2030, according to Northern Water, which is NISP’s sponsor, it will deliver 40,000 acre-feet of water annually to some 80,000 families. One acre-foot equals nearly 326,000 gallons, enough to serve two to four urban households each year.
But before then, and for years to come, the settlement will begin reshaping and restoring the Poudre.
Why the fuss?
Concern over the river has been rising for years. According to Save the Poudre, which sued to stop NISP, nearly 400,000 acre-feet of water flow out of Poudre Canyon, but some 300,000 acre-feet are taken out by farmers and others almost immediately, leaving the river shallow, stressed and over heated as it flows more than 45 miles to its confluence with the South Platte River east of Greeley.
According to the settlement agreement, the $100 million, paid by participants starting now and continuing through 2042, will help move water diversion points farther downstream, leaving more water in the river as it flows east, rather than taking the water out higher up and reducing its flows. Water-sharing arrangements between cities and farmers will be written to enhance recreation and stream improvements. New fish and boat passages will be installed around existing dams on the river. A new network to track the health of the river, its temperature and water quality, will also be added.
“If the money is spent wisely, the river can be better off,” said Gary Wockner, the environmental activist who filed the lawsuit in January 2024 and who leads Save The Poudre and Save the Colorado, nonprofits fighting to protect the rivers.
New dams and reservoirs must go through extensive permitting and environmental reviews to win approval from federal and state regulators. It took NISP about 15 years to win its final permit. That permit already includes requirements that will help the river, according to Northern spokesperson Jeff Stahla.
Under the federal permit, for instance, one-third of the total water delivered by the project must be delivered at specific volumes to boost stream flows in the winter and in the summer to aid fish and cool water temperatures, Stahla said.
Help delivered by the new Cache la Poudre River Improvement Fund will come in addition to the federal and state requirements.
“It’s going to make a significant difference to the Poudre,” Northern Water General Manager Brad Wind said.
The fund will be housed within the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado and will be run by a six-member committee, three appointed by the project participants and three by Save The Poudre.
The settlement has helped take a lot of the heat out of the rooms where water planners and environmentalists such as Wockner fought for more than a decade.
“This was an extraordinary battle and there was a lot of acrimony,” Wockner said. “But moving forward this is going to be a very collaborative situation. The people we are appointing to the committee are positive, collaborative people. It’s going to be a very different situation than what got us to this point.”
The settlement also represents a key change in the financial dynamics that underlie these kinds of deals.
Wockner said the settlement amounts to a fee of about $2,500 per acre-foot for the 40,000 acre-feet of water the project will require. He said it could serve as an important benchmark for future environmental restoration efforts.
Dan Luecke is a well-known hydrologist and environmentalist who led the successful fight to stop Two Forks dam southwest of Denver in the 1980s.
That too was a long, tortured battle, which largely ended when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with backing from the White House, rejected the proposal in 1990.
There was no financial settlement then, Luecke said. But the $100 million Poudre agreement, though not as large as others in the American West, such as the $450 million Klamath River settlement, is noteworthy. (Luecke is a board member of Water Education Colorado, which sponsors Fresh Water News.)
“$100 million is a pretty substantial number. It’s impressive in my mind,” Luecke said. “And the complexity of it, that they have to pump water in these reservoirs and use long pipelines to get the water back out to the urban areas. … It’s monumental.”
The Fort Collins-Loveland Water District, which serves parts of both cities, is the largest participant in the NISP project, and will pay hundreds of millions of dollars for its share of the project and the settlement. Like other participants, it has been setting aside money for years to help pay for the new water supply.
And that’s OK with Stephen Smith, a member of the district’s board.
“I feel comfortable with that,” Smith said, adding that he was speaking as a customer of the district, not a board member. “This money is going to go into the Poudre. If the money were going to buy off Save The Poudre, that would be a negative to me, but to have this six-member committee and to have an opportunity to put $100 million into the river, I consider that to be outstanding, I couldn’t be happier.”