Brady PieperColorado is receiving federal funding to complete a Kennedy-era drinking water and conveyance project that will bring water to over 50,000 residents throughout the Arkansas River Valley.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) will award $250 million in additional funding to the Arkansas Valley Conduit (AVC), a proposed 130-mile pipeline and water delivery system that will provide clean, reliable drinking water to communities from Pueblo to Lamar. The federal funding will expedite AVC’s construction and finalize a decades-long push to address water-quality issues in the region.
The Fryingpan-Arkansas (Fry-Ark) Project Act, signed by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, authorized the construction of the AVC and other efforts to improve health and welfare in the region. Named after the Fryingpan River basin and the Arkansas River, the project sought to deliver water to dozens of communities in southeastern Colorado; however, following decades of development and fundraising, communities could not afford the full cost of the AVC, the project’s final phase.
RELATED: Colorado taps federal, state funds to expand fast-charging EV network
In 2009, lawmakers amended the act, reviving efforts to complete the AVC and authorizing the usage of federal funds to support the project. With Reclamation’s latest funding announcement, federal support for the AVC now totals approximately $500 million through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and appropriations.
The AVC is the final cap on generations of planning, fundraising and related development on the Fry-Ark Project. The AVC phase will construct more than 120 miles of pipeline that can withstand 7,500 acre-feet of water per year.
The estimated $610 million AVC project, led by the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District (SCWCD), will develop a single continuous conveyance pipeline from the Pueblo Connection Point to the Lamar delivery point and three spur and delivery lines to connect to several cities and surrounding communities.
Reclamation will be responsible for the construction of the single continuous conveyance pipeline, or “trunk line”, and will install roughly 20-foot pipe sections with an isolation valve and blind flange that is interoperable with spur lines.
The SCWCD will develop three spur and delivery lines, which are pipelines that branch off trunk lines, to provide water to the Sugar City Spur, La Junta Spur and Eads Spur. This sub-project will also include all features downstream of the points where spur and delivery lines connect to the trunk line.
Water travelling through the pipeline will also be treated and filtered to supplement the existing water supply, which is out of compliance with state salinity and radionuclide requirements.
In accordance with federal actions recommended in the project’s Record of Decision, the AVC will also create long-term conveyance contracts from SCWCD to a variety of state and local agencies, including Colorado Parks and Wildlife for the Pueblo Fish Hatchery, Board of Water Works of Pueblo for the City of Pueblo, Pueblo West Metropolitan District for Pueblo West, Colorado Springs Utilities for Southern Delivery System and Fountain Valley Authority for the Fountain Valley Conduit.
By its conclusion the pipeline is anticipated to serve 50,000 residents in 39 Arkansas River Valley communities from the Pueblo Reservoir to Lamar, including Bent, Crowley, Kiowa, Otero, Prowers and Pueblo counties.
The Reclamation funding will also reinforce federal commitments to provide clean, reliable drinking water to Americans and residents in unserved and disadvantaged communities.
Adhering to the requirements of this federal loan, SCWCD will repay the funding back to Reclamation within 50 years of the project’s construction. Utilizing additional storage space in the Pueblo Reservoir, the district can subcontract with participating water providers listed in the project’s Final AVC Environmental Impact Statement to generate additional revenue.
More information on the project can be found on Reclamation’s initiative website or SCWCD’s AVC program webpage.
Photo courtesy Jeffrey Beall, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
