If a lawsuit aimed at preventing Aurora from using the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project to move water out of the Arkansas River basin prevails, Aurora plans to build more storage to physically move its water from the basin.
The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Denver federal court, claiming the Bureau of Reclamation violated federal environmental law and ignored its own policies in issuing a 40-year contract for Aurora to store water at Lake Pueblo and exchange water to Twin Lakes in a paper trade.
The complaint raises 106 legal citations and primarily asks the court to declare the contract null and void. It also seeks injunctions on the contract and a finding of no significant impact, asks the court to require a full environmental impact statement and asks that the bureau comply with Department of Interior standards for environmental justice.
The bureau had no comment because its policy is not to talk about active lawsuits, said spokeswoman Kara Lamb.
Aurora's alternative is spelled out in the environmental assessment, and plans have not changed, said Jerry Knapp, Aurora's Arkansas Valley operations manager.
"It gets pretty hypothetical, because I don't know what the results of the lawsuit would be," Knapp said. "But, those alternatives haven't changed. We would still be looking at new projects."
Lower Ark Chairman John Singletary said Aurora's future plans sound more like threats, and should not be viewed as concrete proposals.
"To the best of our ability, we're going to watch everything they do and make sure it's done right," Singletary said.
Aurora's plans involve future projects in Pueblo and Lake counties. Pueblo County is in the Lower Ark district and Lake County voters are expected to vote in 2008 for potential inclusion in the district.
"They keep threatening us with 'here's what we're going to do,' " Singletary said. "I am a little offended by their arrogance and the idea that they think they can come into the valley and bully everybody."
In the short term, Aurora would anticipate a five-year period to amend its water right applications in the valley to include additional points of diversion, storing water in Lake Meredith and Lake Henry and exchanging water from there to its accounts in Turquoise and Twin lakes.
Although the mountain lakes are operated by the bureau, Aurora has its own accounts in each. It is allowed to use space in Lake Pueblo only through an excess-capacity contract.
The bureau's environmental assessment also notes: "In the interim period before Aurora's decrees could be modified, the associated water rights that cannot be used would likely be traded or sold to other water users."
In the long term, Aurora would construct or work in partnership with other interests to build a 10,000 acre-foot reservoir below Pueblo Dam.
"It would probably be in Pueblo County," Knapp said. "We would need storage below Pueblo to comply with the Pueblo flow program."
Aurora has an option to purchase a gravel pit operation 6 miles east of Pueblo for use as a future reservoir site, and development probably would take about 10 years.
Aurora also is working on a plan to construct the Box Creek Reservoir, between Twin Lakes and Turquoise Lake in Lake County, and possibly could look for other storage upstream of Lake Pueblo, Knapp said.
Regardless of whether the bureau's contract stands, Aurora would continue to work with other large water users - ditch companies, Pueblo West, Pueblo Board of Water Works and Colorado Springs - on leases, cooperative agreements and efficiencies, Knapp said.
In 2004-05, Aurora leased water from the High Line Canal, and has filed a water court case seeking to obtain future exchange rights for High Line water.
This year, Pueblo West leased some of its transmountain water to Aurora.
The Pueblo Board of Water Works has a long-term lease and exchange contract with Aurora.
Colorado Springs and Aurora are partners in the Homestake Project, which brings water from the Colorado River into their respective water systems through Turquoise, Twin Lakes, the Otero Pumping Station and Homestake Pipeline. They also are the major shareholders in the Colorado Canal and associated reservoir companies in Crowley County.
All four of the municipal suppliers are partners in the Twin Lakes Reservoir Co. and own the overwhelming majority of shares.
Aurora also has an intergovernmental agreement with the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District that promises to pay $25 million to the district over the life of the contract. The agreement also limits the amount of water Aurora may lease and export in the next 40 years.
Aurora has an agreement with the Upper Arkansas Water Conservation District that reduces the water that may be taken from the valley in order to soften the effects of a call on the river to upper basin users and provides $1 million toward Preferred Storage Options Plan development on behalf of the district.
There also is a provision for a $2 million payment to help Southeastern and the Upper Ark jointly develop storage after 2028.
Aurora, a city of 300,000 east of Denver, bought agricultural water rights in Crowley and Otero counties in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Lower Ark lawsuit claims Aurora will be able to move 14,000 acre-feet more per year than it otherwise could with the bureau contracts, drying up at least 7,000 acres with an economic impact of about $4.3 million per year.
The suit claims the contract would damage potential water leasing programs in the valley as well as reducing the availability of water to farmers.
Those actions and effects are contrary to the purposes of the Fry-Ark Project, and were approved contrary to federal policy, the lawsuit claims.
The bureau has leased excess-capacity storage space in Lake Pueblo on a year-to-year basis to Aurora since 1986. Aurora pays about twice as much as users within the Southeastern district. Under the proposed contract, its rate is $43.76 per acre-foot, $49 per acre-foot for exchange and almost $20 per acre-foot for operation, maintenance and replacement.
The contract allows Aurora to lease 10,000 acre-feet of space in Lake Pueblo, with the provision that Aurora's water is the first to spill if the reservoir fills. The exchange contract is for up to 10,000 acre-feet of Aurora's native water to be traded, on paper, for Fry-Ark water in Turquoise or Twin Lakes, with the bureau determining how much and when the exchanges may be made.