Surface Water
A cross section through the Front Range northwest of Denver shows the redistribution and use of western slope water in eastern Colorado through the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. This project has cost about $160,000,000, but it is repaying the investment many times over by providing electric power and increasing farm production.
Moisture carried by prevailing westerly or northwesterly winds falls primarily on Colorado’s western slope, although at some times of year precipitation may come from the northeast or southeast. West of the continental divide, where population is sparse, there is a surplus of water. East of the divide, where more than 90 per cent of the population lives, water is in desperately short supply. The high and largely unpopulated Mountain Province receives by far the greatest proportion of precipitation, while agricultural areas of the Prairie and [Plateau] Provinces receive much less. Needless to say, the major problem involving water in Colorado is how to move it from areas where it is abundant to areas where it is needed.
In many parts of the state, complex water laws and complicated irrigation canals and water systems were developed soon after the area became settled. Gradually but inevitably, water resources have been transferred from the western slope to the eastern. However, such transfer must be undertaken with due regard for the rights of downstream users, notably California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
One of the largest water movement schemes in the state is the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. Water that otherwise would flow into the Colorado River is piped from Grand Lake through the Alva B. Adams tunnel under the high mountains of Rocky Mountain National Park, and into the Big Thompson drainage near Estes Park. It then travels through a series of reservoirs and tunnels into the South Platte River basin, where it is used for irrigation and household water. The water is pumped up the western gradient of this system by electric power produced as it flows down the eastern slope. Surplus electric power serves the Colorado-Wyoming area.
Another large project is the Denver Water Board’s Dillon Reservoir Project, in which western slope water collected at Dillon is pumped twenty-three miles under the continental divide through the Harold D. Roberts tunnel to the North Fork of the South Platte River for use by the city of Denver. The exit point of this tunnel can be seen a few miles west of Grant along U. S. highway 285. This project is continuously growing as Denver’s water needs mount.
In each of these projects, engineering geologists played a prominent part in locating dams and tunnels that would not leak or fail, and that could collect and transport a maximum amount of water during the high-runoff spring season for distribution through the rest of the year. Fortunately for geologists, the tunnels and bores necessary to the projects allowed them to learn a great deal about the structure of the interior of the high mountains, and helped to improve their interpretation of earth history in this most interesting region.
The necessity for storing irrigation water along the eastern mountain front has led to the creation of hundreds of new lakes in the region. Although water levels vary with the season, many of the lakes provide opportunities for water sports and recreation for the burgeoning inland population.
Two large dams have recently been built in western Colorado for another purpose: to control the flow of water in the Colorado River drainage basin. Electric power for western Colorado also comes from these dams. One of the dams is on the Gunnison River at Curecanti, upstream from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument, and the other is on the Frying Pan River near Ruedi. The latter was completed over the objections of geologists, who believed that the extensive gypsum deposits underlying the damsite would cause its failure. Cement pumped deep into the rocks in the vicinity has so far prevented serious rupture.
There is strong resistance by conservation groups to the construction of more dams on Colorado River drainage, primarily because the Colorado and its tributaries pass through many irreplaceable canyons, some of them parts of National Parks and Monuments, that are very much a part of our western heritage.