By Jared Jacang Maher, FACE THE STATE

Denver Water officials were conspicuously vague last week when discussing their plans for a 2011 rate hike of 10.4 percent. It turns out that the proposed increase, if approved, will be the first in a series undertaken by the state’s largest water utility. At the request of Face the State, officials provided a financial document showing that Denver Water seeks to raise about $72 million in additional revenue by increasing rates approximately 35 percent by 2013.

That’s a tall glass to fill for the 1.3 million Metro Denver water customers who’ve been subject to rate increases every year since 2000.

The fact that the proposed rate increase for 2011 alone will add an estimated $41 to the average water bill in Denver had City Council members griping. But multiply that dollar amount by three and the Denver Water Commission could have a lot of angry residents at their next board meeting on Nov 17.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >

By Jared Jacang Maher, FACE THE STATE

Water rates for Denver residents could be increasing in a big way.

In a contentious meeting with Denver City Council this afternoon, officials from the independent water authority revealed that the Denver Water Board is considering rate increases of 14 percent for residential users. The rate hikes could be adopted as soon as next month.

Denver Water provides service to cities throughout the metro area. Jim Lochhead, who replaced the late Chips Berry as CEO, said the rate increase is necessary to cover multiple capital improvement projects, including a significant update to Cheesman Reservoir.

Members of council were not pleased.

“I don’t think Denver Water has our best interest in mind,” said councilman Paul Lopez, who criticized the water district for failing to seek public input and being insensitive to ratepayers during a down economy. Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz relayed what she said is a common complaint from her constituents: “They keep asking us to cut back on water use and then keep charging us more.” The budget for the utility is projected to increase $19 million next year to fund operating expenses and capital improvement on Denver Water’s system. Under the proposal, the average consumer in Denver will pay $41 more in 2011, according Angela Bricmont, the Director of Finance.

Still, council members only got part of the story. Asked after the meeting if 2011 was the only year ratepayers should expect an increase, Lochhead replied he “would anticipate that rates will continually go up,” noting that Denver Water was seeking to ensure “long term sustainability and reliability of the system.” Under their current plan the utility hopes to “smooth” rate hikes over three years.

Denver Water already sold $90 million in construction bonds at a historically low 3.1% interest rate last week. Lochhead indicated that he expects the utility will issue additional bonds in the coming years, though he did not provide a specific dollar amount.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >

Gov. Bill Ritter has signed Senate Bill 52, which makes it clear that a final permit for ground water wells in a designated ground water basin is final, The Fort Morgan Times reports.

Under the bill, the Ground Water Commission, which manages the eight designated basins along the Eastern plains and the Front Range, could revise a basin’s boundaries to remove previously-included areas only if the area does not include wells for which final permits have been issued.

The bill includes an exception for current legal cases winding through the courts, a nod to the 2006 Gallegos v. Colorado Ground Water Commission case where the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that a surface water rights holder who has senior water rights can challenge the permit of a ground water well in a designated basin if the senior water rights holder can prove their surface water rights are being affected.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >

Rafters and anglers are squaring off over rights to prized Colorado waterways, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The debate has spilled into the state legislature and inspired at least 24 citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives. The core question: Do paddlers have an absolute right to float down any river in the state, even rivers that run through private property reserved for fly-fishing?

Steve Roberts says no.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >

The state and water users need to get the Environmental Protection Agency on board sooner in the planning process of providing water for future generations, a member of Gov. Bill Ritter’s Cabinet said Wednesday, according to the Greeley Tribune.

Jim Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, was the luncheon speaker for the 2010 Spring Water Users meeting of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District at the Radisson Conference Center.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >

By Debi Brazzale, COLORADO NEWS AGENCY

With debate over next year’s budget soon to unfold, two southeastern Colorado lawmakers say they are prepared to dig in their heels if more money is taken away from water projects affecting their region.

Early indications are that the funding will be left largely in tact in the coming budget year after having been diverted last year to help cover the state’s budget deficit. Neverthess, Rep. Wes Mckinley, a Democrat from Walsh, and Republican Sen. Ken Kester, of Las Animas, say they are on guard and that the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s funds need to be protected to keep water projects going in their districts.

Of special concern is the Arkansas Conduit Project, which took a temporary hit last year when more than $100 million was diverted from the water conservation board to help the state through its fiscal straits and balance the state budget. Some $35 million of that total came out of the conduit project’s funding, putting federal matching dollars at risk as well. The project provides treated water to southeastern Colorado.

That money since has been recouped through higher-than-anticipated revenue from the state’s severance tax, according to Colorado Water Conservation Board Direction Jennifer Gimbel. Gimbel also said that, so far, next’s year’s pending budget takes $11 million from the board’s funds but that the diversion won’t affect the conduit or any other current projects.

McKinley acknowledged the budget process is far from over.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they did take some more,” said McKinley. “It seems like if there’s money out there, there’s several hands grabbing for it.”

Recommendations from the staff of the legislative Joint Budget Committee, which drafts the state’s budget,  indicate there won’t be any diversions imperiling the water projects in the coming year. If so, Mckinley said, he might try to get the budget amended to include even more funding.

Kester echoed McKinleys assessment.

“We have to have that money … and we can’t just take it down to nothing and continue to operate the water programs,” Kester said.

Mckinley said he is not just concerned about the water fund but also about the state’s Branding Board cash fund, which has about $500,000 in savings that he says the Department of Agriculture would like to have. McKinley said that he was successful in keeping the fund in tact last year despite attempts by the department to tap into that money.

“It’s a savings fund, a users fund. The Brand Board has managed to save up a pretty good chunk of money, and there’s people trying to get it,” said McKinley.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >

A coalition of municipal water suppliers from the south Denver Metro area and Wyoming announced Thursday at the Capitol that they’re banding together to study a project that could end up competing with the Fort Collins entrepreneur’s proposed Regional Watershed Supply project and potentially call for new reservoirs to be built in Larimer County somewhere east of the foothills, The Coloradoan reports.

Each utility in the coalition will contribute $20,000 to a feasibility study for a massive municipal water pipeline project called the Colorado-Wyoming Cooperative Water Supply Project, which would pipe water for 532,000 people from Wyoming’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir to the Front Range.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >

By Debi Brazzale, COLORADO NEWS AGENCY

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers wants to send a message to Congress and President Obama asking them to reconsider federal policy that has put a clamp on some current as well as some prospective water projects in Colorado.

The policy that Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, wants Congress to look at involves a requirement that federal stimulus dollars comply with the Davis-Bacon Act–a 1931 law that says prevailing wages must be paid for labor on most federally funded public works projects.   Harvey said that the problem is not with Davis-Bacon but with the EPA’s interpretation–that the new rules apply retroactively to water projects, a move that some say was too swiftly applied.

“Regardless of how anyone feels about Davis-Bacon, there are some discussions that should have happened,” said Harvey. He said Senate Joint Resolution 18, which he presented today to the Senate Committee on Business, Labor and Technology, initiates that conversation.

Hundreds of water projects in Colorado are generally paid for by a revolving fund of federal and state dollars that is loaned out and repaid over time. Federal money in the revolving fund had not historically been subject to the provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act—until 2009, when Congress declared that the prevailing-wage provision would apply to all stimulus dollars spent, even retroactively.

SJR 18 states that the new interpretation, “will jeopardize or subject to costly renegotiation numerous existing contracts that have already been signed or are about to be signed …” for water projects around the state.

The problem, said Kevin Bommer of the Colorado Municipal League, who came to testify in support the resolution, is not about prevailing wages or about future projects, but about whether the new conditions Congress applies to stimulus money that is doled out for water projects should be applied retroactively to the projects that were already on the table but not yet funded.

“To say that this applies to projects that weren’t finalized was totally unfair for the folks who were in the middle of the process,” said Bommer. “We’re not asking for an up or down vote on Davis-Bacon…..what we’re asking for is fundamental fairness.”

Colorado has received about $34.4 million for clean drinking water projects and about $31.3 million for clean water projects in federal stimulus money.  According to the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, the cost for meeting the Davis-Bacon requirements for metro area projects would increase 4 to 5 percent per project and 20 to 25 percent n rural areas.

The final committee vote on whether or not to move the resolution forward has been put on hold until next week.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >

A bill that opponents say would undermine senior water rights first died, then was resurrected and gained preliminary approval in the House on Tuesday, the Pueblo Chieftain reports. Sponsored in the House by Rep. Kathleen Curry, U-Gunnison, SB52 seeks to honor already permitted wells in the event that the Colorado Ground Water Commission redraws boundaries of the state’s eight existing designated groundwater basins. Designated groundwater basins generally are considered nontributary, or at least not adjacent to major streams and rivers. They may include municipal, industrial and agricultural uses.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >

Legislators decided Wednesday they had gone to the well one too many times in an attempt to balance their budget, The Durango Herald reports. The House turned back an attempt to drain the final $19 million out of a fund used to build water projects.

Stay ahead by signing up for State Bill E-News! >