This book, a history of Denver Water, ties together natural resource management with the political, social, and environmental themes reflected in that history. Limerick objectively presents the good, bad, and ugly in supplying water to a city in the arid west. The lessons learned in exploring western water history, Limerick believes, apply to decisions and considerations in other regions and times. The author documents an important organization's history in a state that houses the headwaters of rivers that supplies this natural resource to 18 states.
Denver Water resulted from the consolidation of a number of suppliers between 1859 and 1918. From the operation of ditch companies that transported water from the South Platte river to the city to the Denver City Water Company, delivering water through "pressurized underground plumbing" (p. 34) and from untreated to sand and gravel purified water, the city's private water system grew. With the vagaries of the economy, the Panic of 1874, and rapid population growth, residents realized the need for a municipal water provider. Placed in the era of America's Gilded Age, the history exhibited its share of greed, corruption, and political patronage. However, the founders of these companies transformed Denver and the arid West from an uninhabitable barrier to American western expansion to a city with a population of 106,713 in 1918. Limerick, however, posed this question: "had the problem of water's scarcity simply been postponed and handed off to the next generation" (p. 49). After the construction of Cheeseman Dam, the private Denver Union Water Company in 1918 became the city's municipal water supplier.
The formation of Denver Water--from the group of entrepreneurs who founded the initial companies and the engineers who constructed its network and dams--saw the emergence of water lawyers, most notably Glenn Saunders. Limerick wrote, "Saunders played a crucial role in the city's major transmountain diversion projects from the Fraser, Williams Fork, and Blue Rivers in the Colorado River Basin" (p. 88). Saunders, who led Denver Water's water rights development as staff attorney until 1965, favored urban uses of water over agricultural interests. A complicated figure, Saunders has a variety of ecological and hydrological characterizations, depending on the perspective of the viewer.
Denver Water found itself plagued with infrastructure challenges from its inception. The growing city population, from 129,000 in 1899 to 270,000 in 1919, caused the Board to have expansion and maintenance issues to confront. Conservation offered the agency one option to control consumption growth. As early as 1922, "the board instituted an alternate-day water sprinkling schedule for customers . . . as early as 1925, Denver Water Board publications were featuring the admonition, "WATER IS PRECIOUS--SAVE IT" (p. 107). The drought and dust storms of the mid-1930s prompted acquisitions to augment the Board's South Platte river possessions. To supplement the Cheeseman Dam, the board acquired the Antero Reservoir, built the Eleven Mile Canyon Reservoir, and used New Deal monies to build the Moffat Tunnel, with corresponding west slope water rights. The Williams Fork Dam, which "stores water for Western Slope users as replacement for diversions from the Fraser and the Williams Fork Rivers" (p. 119), completed construction in 1938. The population pressures on Denver Water continued through the Post World War II area.
Expansion of the population outside the city and county limits complicated the provision decisions. Regarding suburban areas, "the Denver City Charter's mandate to provide water, first and foremost, to residents of Denver" (p. 135) strained relationships with suburban areas. This policy led to the proliferation of special districts and the acquisition of water rights by towns such as Aurora, Englewood, and others. In August 1951, Denver further defined its policy by specifying its service area, drawing the Blue Line, the boundary of the area that the utility could provide water with its existing infrastructure. "The Blue Line enclosed an area 114 square miles, of which 56 square miles were the City and County of Denver" (p. 135). This policy, formed during a period of drought, caused the fragmentation of water policy, infrastructure development, and service. The City suspended it in 1960, after one of the wettest years on record, the year of 1957.
Population projections spurred the search for additional water sources. "Denver Water planners in 1953 predicted that Denver Water would have to supply 725,000 people by 1963, and 'in excess of one million' by the early twenty-first century" (p. 141), an amazingly accurate prediction. Blue River expansion, with the Green Mountain reservoir, the Roberts Tunnel, and Dillon Dam, marked the beginning of the growing fissure between the west slope, the location of the water and the east slope, the users of the water. According to Limerick, this period of Denver's urban imperialism saw the rise of litigation over water diversions. Despite a number of lawsuits filed by the Colorado River Water Conservation District and others, Denver continued its construction of the tunnel, reservoir, and dam.
Various players displayed a growing interest in Colorado water, from west slope stakeholders, ranchers, and farmers to oil shale developers, thus complicating local development. Denver Water continued to build infrastructure. In 1955 the utility completed the Gross Dam and Reservoir, that sits above South Boulder Creek. In contrast, its attempt to construct the Echo Park Dam on the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument proved unsuccessful, thwarted by environmentalists and preservationists.
In 1966 the Bureau of Reclamation devised a plan for a dam at Two Forks, "the confluence of the North Fork of the South Platte and the main stem of the South Platte River" (p. 172). Many considered this a perfect site for a dam to capture spring runoff that would otherwise run off down stream. Denver Water pursued a strategy to realize the dam, a process that extended from 1966 until the dam's final veto by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1990. Denver Water Board member Hubert Farbes cited the numerous factors that thwarted Denver's effort: "the passage of the Poundstone Amendment and the restriction of annexation; the construction of dams at the best sites for water storage, leaving only sites that would be much more expensive to develop; the transformation of 'public values and opinions on water development'; the new environmental laws; the escalating costs of water development; the proliferation of suburbs that could not be annexed; and the 'lawyers of institutional and political complexity' that now characterized the Denver area" (p. 208). Limerick summarized the list by noting changes in regulation, federal bureaucracy, and public opinion.
After recounting this defeat, Limerick turn her focus inward to the administration, operation, and management of Denver Water. Conservation, as it had in 1925, consumed much of Denver Water's advertising dollars, in keeping with demand management. Additionally, the establishment of a division of public affairs manifested Denver Water's recognition of the need to improve its public image, more closely to reflect changing public attitudes, and to consider environmental ramifications. Adopting a tiered-rate system reinforced the utility's message to save water. Finally, by increasing its communication with other water stakeholders on both sides of the Continental Divide, Denver acknowledged the complexity of the environment in which it operated.
The creation of the Colorado River Cooperative Agreement demonstrated Denver Water's success in mediating with West Slope water leaders, which "included county and city governments, irrigation and water districts, companies (including ski resorts), as well as the powerful Colorado River Water Conservation District" (p. 244). The agreement articulated a limit to Denver Water's future development. It stated, "Denver Water may develop any new water project on the West Slope only with the prior approval or under a good faith consultation with the West Slope, depending on specified conditions" (p. 244). The second provision entailed reuse, "giving Denver unchallenged authority to sell recycled water to communities in the metropolitan area's southern suburbs and exurbs" (p. 244). In turn, these communities would refrain from "seeking additional Colorado River water" (p. 245). Denver received from these negotiations the authorization to proceed with the "enlargement of the existing Gross Reservoir (the Moffat Project) which will provide additional water and enhance system reliability for Denver and its service area" (p. 245). Furthermore, Denver "would contribute $25 million as well as water from its Western Slope facilities. Much of the money would be used to support environmental mitigation and enhancement plans" (p. 245). With this document, Denver Water looks to make peace with its past and plot a path for its future.
Limerick ends the book correcting popular assumptions based on facts that she has presented. They range from assumptions such as, "Denver Water could control growth if their leaders would face up to their responsibilities" (p. 255), "power over water in the American West has been concentrated in the hands of a small, centralized, somewhat toxic elite" (p. 263), ". . . use for farms and ranches carries a greater ethical integrity and is more justifiable than the use of water for environmentally parasitic cities and suburbs" (p. 265), "infrastructure works best when the great majority of citizens never have to pay any attention to it" (p. 271), to "water is fated to produce conflicts, contests, and even wars because it is so important to every enterprise and undertaking and to human life" (p. 274).
An examination of water politics within a region of the United States give a glimpse of the complexity of issues surrounding water between nations, pursuing self interest.
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