C-BT Project Helps Region Adapt to Yearly Precipitation Cycles
From a distance, the Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) Project’s 2025 deliveries may seem close to the project’s historical average. However, a closer look at those deliveries illustrates why the C-BT Project plays such a vital role in supporting Northern Colorado.
In October 2024, the Northern Water Board of Directors set a 50 percent delivery quota, providing allotment contract holders one-half of an acre-foot of water for each unit held in their accounts, ensuring they started the year with water in their accounts. After a winter of above-average precipitation but below-average water storage levels, the Board raised the quota at its April meeting to 70 percent — aligning with the most-common quota amount in the project’s 68-year history.
Then the rain and snow stopped falling. In April and May of 2025, regional precipitation monitors recorded totals that were far below average, while temperatures remained above average. As a result, soil moisture levels took a hit, as did reservoirs that were typically kept full for later deliveries. In response, the Board increased the quota to 75 percent in June, releasing an additional 15,500 acre-feet of water for use in northeastern Colorado.
Dry conditions persisted into early summer, and C-BT Project supplies helped water users bring crops to harvest—precisely the reason the project was created in 1937. By late August, however, the pattern shifted: large rainstorms delivered two or three times the average for the period, restoring local water storage reservoirs back to year-end averages.
While this past month has been warm and dry in Northeastern Colorado, we know the possibility of dramatic changes exists. C-BT Project water is one resource that helps keep the region’s economy stable and productive now and into the future.
