A Massive Plumbing System Moves Water Across Colorado’s Mountains. But This Year, There’s Less To Go Around

July 19, 2021 at 10:20 AM PDT

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:24 Speaker 3: 00:35 Speaker 2: 00:40 Speaker 3: 00:43 Speaker 2: 00:49 Speaker 3: 01:22 Speaker 2: 01:29 Speaker 3: 01:36 Speaker 2: 01:49 Speaker 4: 02:14 Speaker 2: 02:26 Speaker 4: 02:39 Speaker 2: 02:55 Speaker 4: 03:26 Speaker 2: 03:46 Speaker 5: 04:01 Speaker 2: 04:15 Speaker 5: 04:26 Speaker 2: 04:35 Speaker 6: 04:47 Staying with the topic of drought, the Colorado river supplies, drinking water for some of the west biggest cities. But a lot of them like San Diego county lie outside the watershed canals, tunnels and pipelines from the river, keep water flowing to their taps. But the infrastructure also puts pressure on the fragile river, especially in dry times from Aspen public radio in Colorado, Alex Hagar explains High up on independence, pass on the continental divide at more than 10,000 feet. The winding road passes by a critical piece of water infrastructure hidden off among the trees. As we look upstream, we see the headwaters of the roaring fork river coming. Christina Medved is with the roaring fork Conservancy And to our left right here. This is the water from the Los van canal coming in here About 80% of Colorado's water falls on the Western side of the state where snow melt in the mountains trickles down into rivers. But about 80% of Colorado is people live east of the mountains. And thanks to gravity that water doesn't flow to them naturally. So for the last 150 years, engineers have created a massive plumbing system to fix that. And up at this dam, it's really easy to see and hear how the water gets split up. Medved and I hike upstream from the dam, right alongside a rushing river of mountains, snow mountains. So the sound that we hear right now is of the undammed portion of the roaring fork river, Just a short stroll downhill. It's a little more tranquil where the dam has reduced the flow to a much narrower, calmer stream. And now we're on the other side of the roaring fork diversion dam. So the sound that you're hearing here is what's passing through making its way down to Aspen and the rest of the roaring fork valley. The water that gets pulled away into the tunnel flows into a reservoir then into another reservoir then into the Arkansas river. And finally onto the front range, it's called a trans mountain diversion. These systems provide drinking water for some of the front ranges. Biggest cities, same is true for canals and tunnels that keep salt lake city Albuquerque and Los Angeles well watered, but these systems aren't without credit. When you First learned about it, that the concept of a trans mountain diversion is crazy. It's it's, it seems wrong. It seems, um, antithetical to the health of the river. And I have to say all of that's true. That's Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado river water conservation district. His group was set up in the 1930s to oppose these diversions and make sure that there's enough water for the people on the Western side of the state. The idea that that large population center, hundreds of miles away can pull water out of a stream and bring it to their, uh, their city for their use is, is hard to accept under our current, um, ecological environmental values that our society holds. Mueller says the issue is those current values aren't written into and the way the rules are now, if you want to put a river's water to use hundreds of miles away from its source, you have every right to do so it might just require a plumbing system to get it there. But right now there's just less water to go around. Period. The front range is currently drought free, but those places in the mountains that provide a dependable source of water for everyone in the state, they are deep into a drought that's left snowpack and river flows way lower than they should. I think that we need to work on, um, making sure that the water balance occurs, um, that in a time like this, where we have an imbalance that, that those, uh, front range diverters really do a good job of coming back and making sure that we, um, that they reduce their uses when they're damaged is so significant. But on the front range, those divers say, they're getting better at listening to the folks. On the other side, when they put up a distress signal, Nathan elder is the water supply manager for Denver water. He says over the last two decades, their per capita water use is down by more than 20%. Everyone in Colorado needs to decrease their use. And we have seen that and we have been successful with our conservation efforts and customer messaging and watering rules. The fact of the Matter he says, Colorado is into deep. The plumbing is there. The demands are still high. And until foundational laws on Western water management change, this is what we have. It has to work together with, you know, water from the west slope, um, moving over to the east slope because He says you can't just pick up whole cities and move them to where the water is. I'm Alex Hagar and Aspen color. Uh,

By KPBS Public Media

About 80% of Colorado’s water falls on the western side of the state. But about 80% of Colorado’s people live on the east side of the mountains. Because of gravity, that water doesn’t flow to them naturally. Instead, Colorado’s heavily-populated Front Range relies on a massive plumbing system to keep drinking water flowing to its taps.