Diving Into Water - part ten: how's our supply looking?
What we have right now
At their May 7th meeting the city council was updated on the water supply. Since we depend on snowmelt for our water, at this time of year the city staff keeps a close watch on what’s happening in the mountains. If you are new to my reports you might want to check out the water section of my site which is bubbling with info.
Good news and bad news
The good news is that there are no drought conditions and our reservoirs are 95% full.
The bad news is that our reservoirs are 95% full.
How can full reservoirs be good and bad you ask?
It’s all about quantity of storage. We have two reservoirs, Baseline and the Goose Haven complex. Baseline Reservoir is full about a month early this year. If our reservoirs are full when snowmelt is happening all that water we are expecting from the melting snow (that we paid for) will go right on by because we have no place to save it.
We divert water from Boulder Creek at 75th Street sending it to the Goose Haven Complex where there are two active cells. At a point on South Boulder Rd we divert water from South Boulder Creek to Baseline Reservoir. Baseline Reservoir is owned by a private company, Baseline Land and Reservoir Company, and Lafayette is a 70% shareholder.
Let’s talk drought
Those in the know about water tell us that in order to ride out a drought we should have a three year supply stashed away, for current residents.
We only have enough storage space for one year.
Let’s get charty
Check this out. The first block shows how much we have stored. Look at how it compares to the second block that shows the average demand we need for our current residents. Not much difference.
The dark blue block shows what a three year supply for current residents would look like.
The final block illustrates what we have, combined with the plans for increasing our current storage. You can see how close it gets to giving us a three year supply. But you can also see staff is reminding council that this is all based on our current population. It does not include growth. Let’s not forget that the state wants us to increase the housing supply and that means more water would be needed and therefore more storage, more treatment, and you get the picture.
If you’ve been following along on my reporting you know there are plans with associated major costs to increase storage and other related operations. You can refresh your memory with this post. Those plans tie directly to the increase in our water rates.
Here’s what our usage looks like over a year
Raw water is used for the golf course, Thomas Farm and Waneka Lake Park landscaping.
Current water restrictions remain unchanged
See the city website for more information on the various water conservation programs available.
Waterwise Landscape Transformation Grant for HOAs from Resource Central. Three Lafayette HOAs will be eligible for grants to use for shovel ready projects for the 2025 pilot program.
From the Resource Central website:
Resource Central, with the help of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, is offering grants to help Homeowners Associations (HOAs) remove high-water-use turf and replace it with waterwise alternatives. Selected HOAs can receive between $5,000 and $25,000 (based on project characteristics) to use for turf removal projects. We are focused on projects that will be utilizing non-chemical removal methods instead of the use of chemicals (like herbicides). If your current plan includes spraying, we strongly encourage you to apply and utilize the grant funding for non-chemical removal. Resource Central will participate in an observational capacity, documenting the process to gain valuable insight into the challenges and successes of large-scale turf replacement projects.
For those of you who like more info
Want to offer more support? Awesome!
We can’t possibly obtain enough water to meet the needs of our abysmal future now that Jared Polis is going to force us to become one of his worker bee colonies, which will nearly triple our current population. It makes me want to abandon all of my conservation efforts because what am I conserving for? So Polis can use it to build his political career? I really don’t see how any of this is ever going to work for what he and his legislative cronies have in mind for us.
Excellent report. Until the state/local governments tackles the building permit approvals we will never resolve the growth/water issue but that's a whole different topic and one that will never be accomplished in my humble opinion.