Northern Water’s Board of Directors Approves Water Principles Statement

Forty years ago, the cities of Boulder, Estes Park, Greeley, Longmont and Loveland, along with the Platte River Power Authority celebrated the dedication of the Windy Gap Project, which was envisioned to help meet their future municipal and industrial needs into the next century. One of the key motivations for building the Windy Gap Project was to provide a new source of supply that avoided 13,000 to 15,000 acres of irrigated agricultural lands that otherwise would be taken out of production. 

Our community leaders recognized as early as the 1970s that an accelerated removal of water from agriculture would have an adverse impact on the economy and character of the region and reverse much of the hard work and progress that Northern Colorado had made in providing an adequate supply of water for agriculture and other beneficial uses. 

At the same time the Windy Gap Project was coming online, Denver-area suburbs began looking north for new sources of municipal water as plans for the 1.1 million acre-foot Two Forks Reservoir began to unravel. The city of Thornton had just acquired roughly 20,000 acres of farmland in Larimer and Weld counties, and other communities were viewing agricultural water rights in Northern Colorado as a cheaper, easier alternative to pursuing new transmountain diversion or storage projects. In a 1998 interview, Greeley Water Department Director Mark Rybus noted, “There is a general feeling that we don’t want raiders coming up here to buy cheap agricultural water, leaving Greeley with the expensive developed water like Windy Gap ... .”