Local water groups force comment extension on Wild Horse plan that targets Homestake Creek

Deep dives into the state permitting process by local water conservation groups and other proponents of preserving dwindling Western Slope water resources have led to the state of Colorado extending its comment deadline for Aurora Water’s dredge-and-fill application for its proposed Wild Horse Reservoir.

“Yes, (the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment) did extend the comment period for the Dredge and Fill Individual Authorization permit application for the proposed Wild Horse Reservoir project so that entities could have more time to review the application documents and provide meaningful comments,” Zachary Henry, senior communications strategist for the city of Aurora and Aurora Water wrote in an email to the Vail Daily Friday.

The 95,000 acre-foot Wild Horse project in Park County, as proposed, would use additional water rights Aurora owns in the Homestake Creek drainage in Eagle County, where Aurora already pumps Western Slope water into its existing 43,000 acre-foot Homestake Reservoir and then through tunnels to the Eastern Slope for transfer down to the Front Range.

Homestake Partners, which comprises Aurora and Colorado Springs, owns an additional 20,000 acre-feet of annual yield in the Homestake drainage, but developing those rights has been a slow slog, including the possibility of the proposed Whitney Reservoir in the area. It’s unclear exactly how much Homestake water Aurora would use for Wild Horse, and local water stakeholder groups want more answers to those questions in the current state permitting process.

Bill Hoblitzell, a watershed scientist and project manager with the consulting firm Lotic Hydrological, confirmed in an email last week that the request for a 90-day comment period was made by the Eagle River Water & Sanitation District and the Colorado River District, pushing the new deadline for public comments to the CDPHE to Nov. 19. 

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Hoblitzell said last week that “if the data they give us remains insufficient to understand impacts, we may have to consider requesting an additional extension to allow reasonable time to sort through it all.”

The advocacy group Save The World’s Rivers, and its side project Save The Colorado, on Friday issued a news release after it submitted a lengthy list of questions as part of its comment letter to the state on the Wild Horse permitting.

“This project would further drain the Eagle and Colorado Rivers, an impact that must be analyzed pursuant to CDPHE’s new Rule 87,” Save The Colorado’s Gary Wockner wrote in the release. “The people of Eagle County deserve to know how their rivers will be impacted by this project and the law requires the city of Aurora to reveal that information.”

Wockner wrote that this is “the first consequential Rule 87 ‘dredge and fill permit’ process undertaken by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment after the federal Clean Water Act no longer protected the applicable state waters.” Colorado adopted its own rules after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to gut federal wetlands protections in 2024.

Wockner, whose groups have sued to stop other Front Range water projects, said the Wild Horse application is incomplete because it fails to detail how much Homestake Creek water will be used to fill the new reservoir in Park County. He also said it doesn’t adequately weigh those environmental impacts and no-action alternatives.

Aurora Water’s Henry wrote in an email that to address questions about the potential streamflow changes in the Colorado River Basin (Homestake Creek flows into the Eagle River, which feeds the Colorado River) related to the proposed Wild Horse Reservoir, Aurora Water has provided additional information to the Eagle River Coalition, the Eagle River Water & Sanitation District, and the Colorado River District.

“The amount of water from the Eagle River that would be used for the proposed Wild Horse Reservoir project would be consistent with how the Homestake system is currently being operated,” Henry wrote. “This is because the proposed project would not alter Homestake system operations. The system remains bound by the legal, hydrologic (streamflow), and physical constraints of the Homestake system, as well as the Eagle and Colorado rivers.

“Even without the proposed Wild Horse Reservoir, Aurora Water will continue to utilize all water physically and legally available to the Homestake system; expanding storage capacity in the South Platte River Basin with the proposed Wild Horse Reservoir Project does not change this, but will enable us to maintain accessible emergency water reserves,” Henry added.

Henry went on to emphasize that the biggest impact to Homestake Creek in terms of water supply as a result of Wild Horse would be on above-average, or wet, years.

“Because of the existing constraints listed above, the streamflow modeling shows that monthly average flows in Homestake Creek would not change in average and dry years due to the proposed Wild Horse Reservoir project,” Henry wrote. “In very wet years, monthly average flows downstream of Homestake Creek would slightly decrease in the month of June.”

Still, local water stakeholders, including Eagle County with its 1041 major infrastructure regulatory authority, clearly want to have more say over how Homestake Creek water is used. State Sen. Dylan Roberts, whose district includes Eagle County, supports local control, although he did not address the specifics of Aurora Water’s diversion plans in a recent phone interview.

“I would never support anything at the legislative level that would make it easier for transmountain diversions to happen,” Roberts said very generally of the types of projects that move water from the Colorado River system into Eastern Slope drainages. Front Range water utilities from Fort Collins to Denver to Colorado Springs currently take about 500,000 acre-feet a year from the western side of the Continental Divide to the eastern side.

“So, whether that’s through reforming the 1041 process or otherwise, that’s something that I would never support and would fight to make sure it doesn’t happen,” Roberts said, adding the favorite to become Colorado’s next governor, current Attorney General Phil Weiser, said at the recent Club 20 debates in Grand Junction “that he also doesn’t support any more transmountain diversions. So that’s encouraging to hear for all of us on the Western Slope.”