U.S. Water News Online
DENVER -- A new groundwater recharge directive by Colorado
Gov. Roy
Romer is "like a Two Forks Dam without using the valley." Referring
to
Denver's ill-fated Two Forks Dam proposal a few years back, Romer
said in a
conference call with reporters that recharging surplus water from the
South
Platte River to meet ever-growing Front Range water demands "just
makes a lot
of sense."
"A lot of our water came down the Platte (this year) and went to
Nebraska,"
said the Colorado governor. Romer said he has met with
representatives of
CH2M Hill and other engineering consultants to discuss the
availability of
technology to recharge aquifers that could be sucked dry within a
hundred
years. "We've got to find a way to recharge those aquifers or
find
alternative ways of storing water," he said. "I will push very hard
on this
... We need to get at it."
The governor's new plant to store South Platte water underground
amounts to
just "another costly diversion to avoid critical statewide water
decisions,"
said an outspoken proponent of high-mountain water storage in
Colorado.
"Instead of wasting energy to pump limited waters into and out of
the
ground," said Dave Miller of Palmer Lake, Colo., "Colorado should be
saving
its unused West Slope snowmelt in high altitude reservoirs for
low-cost
gravity delivery to both slopes during the damaging drought
cycles."
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