A proposed pipeline carrying water 560 miles from Wyoming to Colorado would likely take the pressure off farmers and municipalities on the growing front range... but at what price?

Colorado's population is expected to double by 2050, when 10 million people will call the state home. According to some estimates, that growth will likely require an additional one million acre-feet of water per year.

The problem, in terms of long-term water planning, is that roughly ninety percent of Coloradoans live east of the Continental Divide, while about 75 percent of water falls on the Western Slope. But relatively little of that Western Slope water is unspoken for, and making any more claims on it would put enormous pressure on upstream riparian habitats and downstream agricultural producers alike. It's a different story to the north in Wyoming, however, where unappropriated water still runs fast and strong in the Green River.

And that's where Aaron Million comes in.

The Colorado rancher-turned-entrepreneur has proposed a plan to export up to 250,000 acre feet of water per year from the Green River, 560 miles to the south, to the growing cities along Colorado's front range. Million hatched the plan in 2003, right around the time he and I took a graduate seminar in environmental politics together.

A man with a big plan

An avid fly-fisherman, and a bit of a free market environmentalist, the Boulder-raised Million is not your run-of-the-mill rancher. Nor is his, a run-of-the-mill plan.

Million developed the idea of the project while working on his PhD in Resource Economics at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. But when he spoke of the plan then, it seemed, to me at least, little more than a pipe dream. Today, however, the Army Corps of Engineers is preparing an Environmental Impact Study of the proposal, a proposal that could take the pinch off Colorado farmers and municipalities alike.

Below the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, the Green River hooks out of Utah then loops briefly through Colorado before swinging back into Utah. Million wants to take advantage of Colorado’s remaining entitlement under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, saying about his 2003 epiphany, "I knew the Green River was a legal tributary of the Colorado River mainstream that would allow for a legal filing and appropriation of the water for the state."

The Colorado Water Conservation Board estimates the state has 440,000-1.4 million acre-feet of water to develop under the compact.

The pipeline would carry unclaimed Green River water from near Wyoming's southwestern border with Utah, eastward, alongside the Interstate 80 corridor and across the Continental Divide, which is only about 7,000 feet at that crossing. From there, the pipeline would head down into Laramie and turn southward, pointing toward several reservoirs on the Colorado Front Range.

Sixteen pumping stations powered by locally abundant natural gas would be situated along the 560 mile route.

Big Straws and trans-basin diversions

The Flaming Gorge project one of several plans to bring water to Colorado's front range currently being considered. A 2003 study conducted by Colorado officials found 15 potential big straw possibilities, ranging in cost from $3.7 billion to $15 billion.

Million estimates his project (pictured left, in red) would cost in the vicinity of $3 billion to $6 billion, but keeps his lips pretty sealed about his own personal investment in the water project, "More than a case of Fat Tire, and less than a Gulf Stream V," he says.

Opponents of the Flaming Gorge project claim that Million is just a water speculator who hasn't shown all his cards yet. And the Army Corps of Engineers agrees. In July, Corps officials sent a letter (pdf) to Million asking who exactly the project's consumers would be. Million has said in the past that buyers of the water would be a mix of agricultural and municipal.

In Wyoming, residents see the pipeline as a good old fashioned water grab.  residents also remains strong. Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal recently weighed-in during the Army Corps of Engineers public comment period on the plan.

"I’m not sure they have adequate definition of the need for the project to even do the analysis," said Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal recently, adding, "I think this is just a rich guy who just wants to move water."

But there is also a major environmental dimension to the debate. Trans-basin diversions can do nasty things to riparian habitats, fisheries and overall stream health.

"When you're talking about delivering that kind of previously unallocated water from one basin to another — with firm yield on an annual basis — it's hard to imagine that fisheries in the home basin would not get the short end of the stick," Scott Yates, Wyoming water project director for Trout Unlimited, told The Denver Post.

But water will likely need to come from somewhere

Innovative conservation programs for residents of several western cities to rip up their lawns and replace them with low-water alternatives are one way of creating water where there was none. But with the increasing likelihood that climate change will hasten the severity of the water crisis in the American West in coming years, it is quite likely that more than conservation will be needed to keep the growing cities hydrated. 

"To a certain degree, I think when you look at the problems in the region, this is the second best alternative," Million said of his project. "The first best alternative is for everybody to move to Missouri." 

A draft EIS should be completed in 2012 and a final version in 2014. And according to the optimist Million, the pipeline could be built within two years of the final study's completion.

Image of Flaming Gorge Reservoir via chefranden

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