1. What are the current watering restrictions?
NO WATER RESTRICTIONS
All water usage is currently left to your discretion including day, time and application. However, we strongly encourage "Voluntary Water Conservation" including withholding from turf watering between 10am and 6pm. This is a simple and great way to help conserve our valued water resource.
Little Thompson Water District evaluates the water position every month and will modify restrictions as needed if water consumption exceeds availability.
2. What do you charge for water?
Our rate charts may be found here.
3. If droughts are so serious, why does the District continue to sell water taps?
New development brings us more water for every new tap and pays its own way through fees. Home builders pay $10,500 in fees per tap -- $1,500 to cover costs for the actual installation and $9,000 to fund a future water treatment plant expansion. Fees for larger taps scale up accordingly and may be found here.
The Little Thompson Water District plays no role in encouraging or discouraging development. Those decisions are made by city or county planning and zoning entities. In fact, the District is legally obligated to provide treated water to those who ask for it, provided that the requirements of the District are met. The District issues a "commitment letter" to each individual or developer, outlining how many taps may be purchased and the conditions of serving water at that particular location. Quite often, the conditions include off-site waterline improvements that benefit existing tapholders as well. The commitment letter is generally included with the county or town application for a new subdivision.
4. What is the district doing to save water?
We have implemented a number of actions, including fixing all leaks immediately and doing water audits on larger users. Some longer-term projects for drought relief include:
* Along with our partner in the Carter Lake Filter Plant, the Central Weld County Water District, LTWD completed the 9,800 acre-foot Dry Creek Reservoir project. Plans approved by the districts' joint board called for Dry Creek Reservoir to be constructed on land west of Berthoud and south of Cushman Estates, roughly bounded by Larimer County Roads 23, 6 and 8-E. The project was authorized for nearly $8 million in low-interest financing from the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The design was completed in early 2005, construction began in late 2005 and the reservoir was complete by the end of 2006. Filling began in early 2007 and was completed in mid 2008.
* Exploring options for acquiring and using native irrigation water -- the Eastern Slope's natural summer supply. These waters will either be pumped to the existing treatment plants near Carter Lake or new "peaking" treatment plants to be built elsewhere in the District. The District has modified its water dedication policy to accept most local, native water rights for water service.
5. What should I do to save water?
See our Water Conservation page and many useful Web links.
6. Where does our water come from?
The majority (98 percent) of the water owned by the District is Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) water, collected on the Western Slope. Find out more about the Colorado-Big Thompson Project.
When the C-BT project came online in the 1950s, 90 percent of its water went to farmers. These days, only 40 percent of CBT shares go to agriculture -- the rest are held by municipal and industrial users, including the cities of Fort Collins, Greeley, Louisville, Broomfield, Longmont, Boulder and Loveland.
Over time, some farmers have sold all or part of their historical water rights. Land sold for development sometimes comes with shares of C-BT. Other current sources of the water are water brokers or other agricultural interests who are "drying up" their land. In any case, water rights are expensive -- one share of C-BT currently sells for $9,000 to $9,500.
7. Why doesn't the District just buy more C-BT or other raw water?
NCWCD limits the amount of C-BT shares the District may own based on the number of taps currently being served and the number of lots in development. The District has to justify its ownership to NCWCD every 12 to 18 months.
The District seasonally exchanges its native water supplies (the water that naturally flows to the Eastern Slope) for additional C-BT water. There is no limitation on the amount of native water supplies that the District may own, but they count against our C-BT ownership, and getting the native water to the existing treatment plants near Carter Lake creates logistical problems.
8. Why should I care what the C-BT quota is?
Because in a drought, our District may not get enough water from the Colorado-Big Thompson Project to meet user needs, requiring us to rent expensive C-BT water on the open market. The Colorado-Big Thompson system was built to provide supplemental water to agriculture in eastern Colorado -- not every drop for every use. Each water year, NCWCD assesses the need for water on the Eastern Slope, based on such indicators as snowpack, runoff and reservoir levels, and declares a quota for delivery of C-BT water. If the snowpack and anticipated run-off are above average, then the quota will be below average. The quota is the percentage of each C-BT acre-foot unit that will be delivered in a given year. In 1998, the last wet year, NCWCD declared a 50 percent quota.
As we entered the drought cycle, lower-than-expected runoff in 2000 and 2001 caused NCWCD to raise its quotas above average. It delivered 100 percent in 2000 and 90 percent in 2001. In 2002, need indicators could have justified a 100 percent quota. However, the water in C-BT storage plus anticipated run-off only allowed for a 70 percent quota declaration. It was the first time in the 55-year history of the C-BT project that the system could not deliver the needed quota.
The initial 2003 water year quota was declared: 30 percent, less than half of the water available in the previous water year. That meant that every one of the 310,000 C-BT shares would receive less than 98,000 gallons per share, including farmers and residential users.
Thirty percent of our C-BT quota would provide about 10,000 gallons per month per tap. This not enough water to meet the expectations of residential customers for outside watering during the growing season. Many residential tapholders use five to 10 times that amount of water during the summer quarter.
Since that time snowpacks have increased and reservoir supplies have replenished. The corresponding C-BT quotas for subsequent years have reflected the conditions accordingly. Each year, however, we are very sensitive to the annual quota and the impact it has on our customers.
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