Water Co. Seals a Deal to Use Runoff to Irrigate

Two Rivers Water Co. of Denver, Colo., announced that it has received approval of a plan that allows use of water leased from Pueblo Board of Water Works to be stored in its reservoirs and used to irrigate farmlands in Huerfano and Pueblo County. The administrative approval follows an application filed in the Water Court by Two Rivers in December 2011 to capture high river flows during the spring runoff to make it available for farming later in the summer. 

"This approval by the Colorado State Engineers Office is an important building block in our strategy to restore farms in Huerfano County,” said Gary Barber, Two River's chief operating officer. “This is called an exchange, where we capture the snowpack runoff upstream and the Pueblo Board of Water Works replaces that water at the confluence with the Arkansas River. We will capture large blocks of water into our reservoirs located upstream and retime the use downstream without the prohibitive cost of pumping water uphill.”

Retiming water for farm usage is critical, since the spring runoff comes in May and June, while the crops have the highest water need in July and August.  

“We acquired, and are systematically restoring, four historic reservoirs in Huerfano and Pueblo County,” said CEO John McKowen. “The leased water, when combined with our own water rights, provides reliability to our farm expansion program in Southern Colorado. These high altitude reservoirs are integral to sustaining agriculture in the basin. The more water we can keep in storage in Colorado, the more crops we can produce.”

The Pueblo Board of Water Works lease is for a five-year period to allow Two Rivers to invest in modernizing its farms and upgrade the condition of the reservoirs. The lease period will also provide an opportunity to collaborate with other regional water purveyors by establishing the validity of the exchange.