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Water fixes leave some residents dry
By By:Sean Hadden
Amid all the recent charged talk concerning Douglas County's future water supply, some county residents feel they are being ignored by proposed fixes.
These people get their water from wells at the edge of the Denver Basin, and levels are dropping as more people tap this system of aquifers.
A venture to bring overflow water from Denver Water's mountain reservoirs would mostly bring water only to people with access to municipal water systems, say residents and the plan's proponents.
Another proposal would bring water traditionally earmarked for irrigation from fast-growing areas north of Denver to the county through a pipeline from Barr Lake.
This proposal also would provide water only to people on municipal systems, county officials and water experts have said.
County officials have said there is room in both plans to designate some water for return to the aquifers, especially during wet years.
Residents living in Margins A and B of the county's water supply overlay district who rely on wells for their water are seeing water levels drop significantly as more people move to the urban communities in the county.
These margins are designated areas near the edge of the Denver Basin aquifer system. In Douglas County, the margins are along the foothills to the west of the county's urban areas.
As more people move into these urban areas, they need water, and most get it through municipal systems that pump it from the aquifers.
If one thinks of the basin as a bowl filled with water, the margin areas have been compared to being near the top edge.
If someone sticks a straw into the bowl and begins drinking, water first recedes from the bowl's top edge.
County resident Ed Fox said he knows people whose wells are dropping 30 feet per year.
He quoted one man living on a well in Margin A as saying that if that rate of decline continues, his well will be dry in six years.
"We have to develop a plan to address those people," Fox said.
Douglas County Commissioner Jim Sullivan said the only wells that have gone dry have been very shallow wells that probably shouldn't have been permitted.
Once in the past, a number of these wells failed and the county helped residents form a special district to bring in water, Sullivan said.
But he said that in recent years, prospective well users have had to prove adequate water supply by drilling a test well.
Permits are only issued when an ample water supply is demonstrated, Sullivan said.
When such a supply is proven, Sullivan said he knows of no well that has dried up.
"To the best of our knowledge, there has never been a well go dry," he said.
If permitted wells in the county are properly used, the county believes they will continue to be productive, Sullivan said
Steve Boand, a hydrologist living in the county and a candidate for the Douglas Board of County Commissioners, said there are some things that can be done to address the problems faced by residential well users in Margins A and B.
The county should come up with a plan to put water back into the aquifers directly at the margins, Boand said.
The points are not known at which to pump water into the ground to most effectively recharge the aquifers, he said. These places would have to be discovered.
Another thing the county can do to protect residents in the margins is to stop approving development there that would access basin aquifers, Boand said.
In 2003, commissioners waived county zoning regulations for a proposed luxury golf course and subdivision development in Margin A.
The waiver allows the proposed subdivision to use aquifer water, but the regulations say that all development proposed in this margin must come from renewable surface water.
The subdivision would be allowed to take 133 acre-feet of water each year from the Arapahoe aquifer.
"It should be unquestionable that they should not approve such heavy water use plans," Boand said.
He said commissioners have granted at least one other water-use waiver grant access to aquifer water.
Boand asked what good the regulations do if they are not followed.
The county's master plan lists as one of its goals to "Limit the impacts of urban development on rural wells."
Well levels also are dropping in other areas of the county, and it is predicted that someday, if nothing is done, water costs will skyrocket because pumping from deeper and deeper levels will cost more and more, water experts have said.
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