Election 2021: What you need to know about Terry Ranch, the City of Greeley, and Save Greeley’s Water
Photo by @oandersonrian via Unsplash.
By Dan England
Save Greeley’s Water got enough signatures to put two proposed amendments to the city’s home rule charter up for election this year. If voters approve, this could be the biggest change to the city’s water department since W.D. Farr brought water from the mountains into Greeley.
The two amendments will be on November’s ballot, and so could the leader of Save Greeley’s Water, John Gauthiere, who said he plans to run for mayor against John Gates.
The two amendments would give residents a lot more control over the department, something John and Mary, his wife, say they need after the city purchased the water and storage rights to Terry Ranch, a place on the northern edge of Weld County just before the land creeps into Wyoming.
Terry Ranch was a new way of thinking, in the same way that Farr went against common knowledge and brought water from the western slopes to nine counties with the Big Thompson project. Terry Ranch is an aquifer storage project that added 1.2 million acre-feet of water to the city’s proud portfolio. Save Greeley’s Water attempted to stop the city council from approving the deal, and now they’ve turned to the charter amendments in the hopes of preventing a deal like it from happening again.
“They haven’t done their job,” Gauthiere said, “and they are looking for a quick and dirty solution. And it’s pretty dirty.”
Gauthiere does have credentials. He was Greeley’s chief of engineering and management for the city’s water department from 1979-2001. He likes to portray himself as one of the many saviors of Greeley’s water, and now he believes he’s tasked with the job once again.
“I came here 42 years ago to take care of Greeley’s water system,” he said. “It was in a system of disrepair. We had a lot to correct. But that’s what attracted me to Greeley. There was a lot to do. We just needed to straighten up the mess a little bit. It just needed a lot of tender loving care.”
He also said he’s not afraid of new ideas. He considers Farr one of his biggest influencers. He praises Farr’s ingenuity. But he sees several things wrong with Terry Ranch.
The two amendments would bring decisions like Terry Ranch to voters. Just how many decisions will go before voters is one of the many contentious pieces between Save Greeley’s Water and the city. We’ll dig into some of those other issues here.
Special elections
The city has emphasized the fact that routine decisions under the rule change would require special elections that cost $200,000. The Gauthieres say this isn’t true.
The amendment would trigger a special election if the city wishes to:
Sell water rights, shares or supplies or its facilities or trade or lease them for more than five years.
Provide, purchase or lease ground water and recycled wastewater for residents’ drinking water and non-potable use.
Map of the Terry Ranch Project. Courtesy photo.
These uses would also require the review of an independent water scientist or engineer.
Gauthiere spent 50 years working in the water industry and did analysis and many other water projects for a living. He believes outside parties would be useful, and he also believes residents should have more of a say in major water decisions.
“I think some outside sources would help us get the best deal possible,” he said.
Gauthiere also said the city wouldn’t have to have special elections. They could wait for a normal election to save the cost.
But those clauses worry Sean Chambers, director of water and sewer for the city, and Adam Jokerst, deputy director of water resources. They routinely make water leasing and purchasing decisions longer than five years for the city, not just in huge deals such as Terry Ranch.
Here’s an example: The city just purchased water rights from Longs Peak Dairy. The dairy offered the rights at a reduced rate because the city agreed to lease them the water back for 20 years. The deal gave the dairy some money and allowed them to continue farming.
The city does this quite a bit, which gives them exclusive bargaining power, something developers can’t offer because they need the water for the residents who will buy their lots. This saves taxpayers money and keeps water rates low, Jokerst said. They make these purchases three to four times a year. But under the amendment, they would have to hold a special election, which would strip away that bargaining power.
“If I were selling you my house, and I’d need to hold a special election to do so, that would be difficult and cost a lot of time,” Jokerst said.
The dairy had better offers from developers for those water rights, Jokerst said, and may have taken them if they had to wait on the city, even on the relatively expedited schedule of a special election.
The city believes a special election would cost $200,000, and Save Greeley’s Water believes it would cost $50,000.
Both say they got that information from representatives from the city clerk’s office. Jokerst said in response that election costs are fluid, so it’s hard to say just how much an election would cost.
Water quality of Terry Ranch
When Gauthiere calls the water supply at Terry Ranch “dirty,” he means it. The water contains uranium, a dangerous substance common in groundwater that is costly to treat. It’s far different, he said, than the high-quality mountain water the city uses for much of its supply and is probably one of the reasons the city won an award for the best-tasting drinking water in the country.
The city acknowledges that the water will cost more to treat. It will be the costliest by 10% over the next-highest water supply. But they know it’s safe, Jokerst said. The city did 7,000 water-quality samples and identified 575 compounds from seven wells on all corners of the ranch. The city also had an independent third party analyze the water, and they certified it and said the water could be treated at a fair price.
“The uranium can be cost-effectively removed,” Jokerst said. “I understand the word ‘uranium’ is scary, but it’s not scary to us. We can remove it and we will.”
Removing uranium from groundwater is common practice with proven methods to do it, according to the city.
“No Greeley customer will receive water with detectable uranium,” according to its website.
The price of treatment, Jokerst said, can be mitigated somewhat because the city plans to use Terry Ranch as a backup water supply in droughts. They hope they won’t have to treat it as often as water from other sources, but droughts or ashen runoff from burn scars as a result of big fires may force their hand sooner.
Save Greeley’s Water said the group’s other concerns are a sewage sludge disposal site to the west and the Atlas Missile site to the north in Wyoming leaking trichloroethylene, a known carcingen, that Gauthiere believes is heading toward the aquifer.
The city isn’t worried about the sludge disposal site because of a tight sandstone layer between it and the aquifer. In an analysis, they determined that it will take 1,400 years to reach the very edge of the water supply. Gauthiere calls that test “deceptive” because it was conducted at the most distant point from the ranch’s highest-producing water well. But the city believes in its findings.
“Plus sewage sludge is heavily regulated,” Chambers said, meaning it can’t be flowing out of control.
The city believes the trichloroethylene will continue to flow east as it has for years. But in the small chance it does reach Terry Ranch, Jokerst said the city could treat it.
“It does flow into Cheyenne’s water supply,” he said, “and Cheyenne treats it and drinks that water.”
Regardless of the concerns, the city would monitor the water supply, just like it does with all other water supplies.
“That’s just good practice,” Jokerst said.
Non-potable water
Tagging non-potable water in the proposed amendment also may add to special elections, since the city plans to use more of it, not less, as the years go on. The city uses non-treated water — and there are different categories, so it isn’t sewage — to water parks and other areas. This saves money on treatment costs and allows the city to use water twice to stretch its resources. It also saves the city money because the shares it purchases for uses other than drinking water are $25,000 per acre-foot cheaper, Jokerst said. And using non-potable water takes the demand off a water treatment plant that is pushed in the summertime, the busiest time of year, to meet the public’s demands. If there wasn’t a non-potable water system, it’s plausible that the city would need to upgrade its facilities to meet that summer demand, a project that would cost millions.
Putting that before voters would be problematic, Chambers said, and he lets a little frustration slip that the group doesn’t trust his expertise and training when explaining this issue.
“Frankly, this feels like the sort of decision educated people running water system should be making,” Chambers said.
Gauthiere, who does have that experience, admits the Terry Ranch decision makes him question the city’s engineers.
“I think the city has great salesmen,” he said. “I don’t think they have great engineers.”
Milton-Seaman Reservoir
One of Gauthiere’s main arguments against Terry Ranch is that the city gave up on enlarging Milton Seaman Reservoir.
The city began the permitting process in 2006 and was still working on it more than a decade later when it began to explore Terry Ranch. This is common in the water permitting world, especially for an environmentally sensitive project such as Milton Seaman.
Gauthiere, who has been through that process many times, said a lack of leadership led the city to drop out of Milton Seaman and pursue what he sees as an easier solution in Terry Ranch. He acknowledges that the permitting process was difficult, but he also said it wasn’t impossible.
“You had to be a bit of a bulldog,” he said. “You have to jump through the hoops. It’s a matter of using your skill sets. You have to solve those problems.”
Milton Seaman was desirable, he said, because it’s a proven method of water storage, and it would capture the high-mountain water that helped Greeley thrive.
Jokerst, who has more than a dozen years experience permitting projects, said as the years went on, the environmental aspects of the project were making it difficult. Those include expanding the dam 10 times its original size at a time when dams are frowned upon. That expansion would inundate land owned by the state, the U.S. Forest Service, the City of Fort Collins and Larimer County, and the city and county had already turned that land into natural areas, so it’s likely Greeley would face opposition from local residents. The project would also flood critical habitat, and the endangered species act is very strict: Going against it can be a death warrant for permitted projects.
“It became more and more apparent that we weren’t going to get a permit to proceed,” he said.
Part of the permitting process involves researching alternatives to the project, and as a part of that due dillegence, the city discovered Terry Ranch. In this case, you could argue the permitting process did its job: It forced Greeley to find an alternative that won’t damage environmentally sensitive habitat. Terry Ranch, because it’s underground, doesn’t have those issues and doesn’t require a complex permitting system as a result.
A non-renewable resource
Terry Ranch doesn’t recharge itself. This alone should have nixed the project, Gauthiere said, rather than replace a project that adds to itself every spring with the snowfall in the mountains.
“When you develop a municipal population with a water demand, that has to be met every year,” he said. “Groundwater is going away. It’s a finite resource. We talk about the need for water conservation. Conservation can do a lot, but it can’t fix supply.”
Gauthiere sets aside concerns about climate change limiting snowfall, turning that into a finite resource as well, saying “droughts come and go,” proven by tree rings that show the longest drought in the state’s history was seven years, and that drought was in the 1800s. We’ve had wet years and dry years, he said. Last year in northern Colorado the snowfall was average, which still added to the water supply in Milton Seaman.
The city acknowledges that Terry Ranch is a finite resource, but using up that resource would take centuries, Jokerst said, and would be impractical. Greeley plans to artificially recharge the supply by pumping treated water into the tributary. It will use water it already owns to do this, but this bolsters both side’s arguments. Yes, the city is using its own supply, but some of that will be water the city wouldn’t have otherwise because it would have no way to store it.
The city compares this to a savings account: It will draw down the water during the lean years and add to it when they have wet winters or springs.
“We don’t want to use it all up,” Jokerst said. “We want it to be perpetual.”
The city will start construction next year and plans to build the infrastructure needed to carry out that plan, such as pipelines, over 15 years, as the city’s current water supply is enough, assuming there’s no drastic drought or change in the weather. But that’s also a dangerous assumption, given climate change that limits the water supply and fires that turn what we have into an ashen (but temporary) mess. The city can speed up construction, but that would mean taking on debt through bonds instead of paying for it with cash.
“But there’s nothing in the way, really, of speeding that up,” Jokerst said.
Taxation without representation
Gauthiere said he wasn’t given an adequate chance to address Terry Ranch. He spoke at a city council meeting where he was given two minutes to make his argument, a common time limit for items not on the agenda. It’s why he started the amendment and why he plans to run for mayor.
“I need to see if there’s something else there,” he said, something fishy he could challenge in court.
This is, to be frank, a common complaint among any opposition.
Jokerst said the city gave 40 presentations, had four city council meetings, other water board meetings and even did more tests on residents’ suggestions. It’s true that sometimes residents don’t hear about meetings until it’s late in the process, but Gauthiere could have spoken during those times. Jokerst said the city tried to be as transparent as possible during the decision and alluded to it being one of the most public decisions the city’s ever made.
The cost of development
At some point, rather than turn to what Gauthiere calls questionable water supplies to meet the need for growth, Greeley may have to decide that it doesn’t have the water for that growth.
“When do we let the cost of water determine what kind of development we allow?” Gauthiere said. “It should be self-limiting.”
Jokerst calls this a “chicken-and-egg” argument, and it’s an interesting one: Does the availability of water spur growth, or does inevitable growth make cities obtain new water supplies? That’s one of the most prevalent debates among water departments, especially those in Colorado, and it, just like whether the chicken or egg came first, may never end.
Even so, that philosophical riddle should be solved by council members and city planners, both Chambers and Jokerst said. State projections call for robust growth in Greeley, just like many cities in Colorado, in the next decade and decades beyond. Weld County was the second-fastest growing county the state, expanding by 30 percent, according to the latest census count. The city’s long-range comprehensive plan, which is built by planners and examined and approved by elected officials, matches those growth projections.
“It’s our charge to develop a water supply to meet the projected population,” Jokerst said.
The city calls this an “integrated water supply,” meaning it responds to growth and growth is allowed as a result of what’s there, and the water department has many meetings a month with city planners to tweak both plans.
Growth, and how the city responds to it through its water supply, may be the heart of the conflict between Save Greeley’s Water and the city. The city believes it has its residents’ best interest at heart and has qualified, experienced workers to achieve it, with many checks and balances through boards that have residents serve on them and policies approved by elected officials.
Gauthiere said Terry Ranch proved that isn’t so and believes the public needs a larger say in deciding that future.
“We did a lot of work on this,” he said of getting the signatures needed to put the amendment on the ballot. “I have the utmost respect for people who stood up and got out of their comfort zone. I must have bumped into 20,000 people, and the one thing we realized is the general public cares. They care what happens to Greeley.”
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