Denver Water asks judge to stay injunction against Gross Dam construction, calling the stop-work order “egregious” and “radical”  ...0

Denver Water late Friday filed for a stay of a federal judge’s injunction that halted completion of the $531 million Gross dam and reservoir expansion, calling the court ban a “radical” move raising safety and cost issues and highlighting a broken environmental permitting process.

The judge’s construction halt late Thursday also prompted an unusual intervention by Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, who issued a statement saying, “Halting the reservoir’s expansion is deeply concerning.” Denver mayors appoint Denver Water commissioners in terms staggered over multiple mayoral terms, but rarely get involved in ongoing operations of the 1.5 million-customer water agency. 

Boulder County and Denver officials have often been in dispute over the near-tripling of Gross’s dam and water pool on South Boulder Creek in western Boulder County. In 2021, Boulder County commissioners reluctantly agreed to an environmental mitigation package meant to soften construction impacts, but said they felt “bullied” by Denver’s threats to sue if the project was rejected. One commissioner called Denver Water’s expansion “20th century thinking” from the era of massive dams forever altering important rivers. 

Denver Water, for its part, appeared taken aback by the strong language U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello used in the injunction Thursday. Arguello’s 22-page ruling in favor of environmental plaintiffs dismissed Denver Water arguments that shutting down work and re-doing the federal permitting would increase Gross project costs, calling the agency’s problems largely “self-inflicted.”

“This court will not reward Denver Water for starting construction on the project despite being aware of the seriousness of the environmental law challenges,” Arguello wrote. She issued a temporary injunction on additions to the new dam, pending a safety hearing within a few weeks, and a permanent injunction against clearing any more trees or other work inside the expanded water pool needed behind the raised dam. 

☀️ READ MORE

Tiny zebra mussels forced Colorado to completely drain a lake. Now, it’s time to refill it.

Federal judge orders Denver Water to stop Gross Dam construction; Army Corps must rewrite permits 

Seven Colorado River states have mere weeks to reach water agreement after long impasse

“Denver Water is gravely concerned about this ruling and its ramifications for the future of metro Denver and its water supply,” the water agency said Friday in a statement accompanying its request for a stay of Arguello’s ruling. Denver Water asked Arguello to stay her decision pending the agency’s expected appeal, and to agree to the stay by April 10 so that scheduled work can go forward. 

“We view this decision as a radical remedy that should raise alarm bells with the public, not only because of its impacts to water security in an era of longer, deeper droughts, catastrophic wildfire and extreme weather, but because it serves as an egregious example of how difficult it has become to build critical infrastructure in the face of relentless litigation and a broken permitting process,” Denver Water’s statement said. “In this case, the order is even more appalling with the project so deep into construction.”

Denver Water has dug into the foundations of the existing 340-foot-high dam as part of adding new concrete scheduled to raise the dam to 471 feet by later this year. The utility has said about 60% of the work was done by a late-fall seasonal construction pause. Rock cliffs at the dam are being held back by temporary safety rods and bolts, Denver Water’s statement said. 

The agency also said banning construction will cost jobs for those lined up to resume spring concrete pours and other Gross Dam preparation. 

The environmental groups led by Save the Colorado, who first filed suit against Gross expansion in 2018, said they would continue to fight the project through Denver Water’s appeals. They have also said, though, that they are willing to continue talks on adding new mitigations for environmental damage. 

Last October, the judge first ruled that the ongoing reservoir expansion violated federal environmental laws, and ordered Denver Water to negotiate with Save the Colorado, Sierra Club and others. The court faulted the Army Corps of Engineers for permitting construction without fair consideration of all the alternatives that might avoid dredging and filling portions of the South Boulder Creek channel, where Gross sits. The judge also said the Army Corps should have more thoroughly analyzed whether climate change and lower precipitation in the Western Slope catchment area mean that Denver Water won’t have the right in some years to put extra water into Gross Reservoir.

A lawful permit analysis under the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act “requires confirming that there will even be additional water to impound,” the judge wrote.

A December deadline came and went without a mitigation deal, and the environmental groups asked for an injunction against further construction. 

On Thursday, when Arguello granted the injunction, Save the Colorado said Denver Water had “rolled the dice” in moving aggressively on construction beginning in 2022 while legal objections were still in play. 

After Friday’s request for a stay of the injunction, Save the Colorado co-founder Gary Wockner said, “We respect the judge’s ruling. We also want the dam to be safe, and we will defend the judge’s ruling in the appeals court.”

The environmental groups and Boulder County officials and neighbors have objected to the Gross expansion on multiple fronts over the years. Some object to Denver Water diverting more Colorado River water rights under the Continental Divide to fuel more Front Range housing growth and say the water agency should work harder conserving existing water use among its Denver and suburban customers. 

Others lamented loss of forest, trails and open space for the expanded Gross Reservoir, as well as the short-term impacts of major construction across six years.

Denver Water says it needs more storage in Gross Reservoir to give a northern balance to a storage system currently concentrated in southern suburbs, and drawing on precipitation in the South Platte River Basin. The agency has also pointed out that expanding Gross was part of years of negotiations with environmental groups and local officials to increase water supply in a more acceptable way, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shocked water developers by rejecting Denver Water’s proposed Two Forks Dam on the South Platte in 1990. 

In its appeal of the injunction, Denver Water says it is under orders from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to finish the Gross expansion by 2027. The dam expansion includes a new hydroelectric generating system that is governed by FERC rules. 

Those claims of federal priority by Denver Water were part of what rubbed Boulder County officials raw in 2021 when they reluctantly agreed to the $12.5 million mitigation package from the Gross construction proposal. Boulder County had wanted Denver Water to go through a detailed “1041” county approval process based on state land use laws, but Denver Water argued that because of the hydroelectric project the Gross expansion was governed by federal rules and not county law. 

At the time, Boulder County Commissioner Matt Jones said he believed Denver Water planned to rebuild a hydroelectric generator at the dam “so they could roll over Boulder County” by avoiding future county regulation when it came time to expand. Denver Water says the dam currently generates about 7.6 megawatts of electricity. 

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Denver Water asks judge to stay injunction against Gross Dam construction, calling the stop-work order “egregious” and “radical”  )

Also on site :

• Watch- Navjot Singh Sidhu burns and cooks MS Dhoni on LIVE TV after a Dot Ball on Free Hit
• ‘Saturday Night Live’ Pays Tribute To Val Kilmer
• Myanmar Earthquake: Death Toll Reaches 3,471 as Rescue Efforts Continue