Rueter-Hess Reservoir History: Part 6 - Construction & Initial Operation of the Reservoir
The last Rueter-Hess Reservoir history blog described the permitting of the dam and reservoir, which required two complete cycles of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review. This resulted in two Section 404 permits and Records of Decision (RODs), one in 2004 and the second in 2008. The result was the ability for the Parker Water and Sanitation District (PWSD) to construct Rueter-Hess Reservoir to a 72,000 acre-foot (ac-ft) capacity.
Since the 2004 ROD allowed the construction of the smaller Rueter-Hess Reservoir to 16,200 ac-ft of capacity, construction of the dam began soon after receiving approval from the US Army Corps of Engineers. While the initially approved dam was lower and shorter in length, since the second NEPA action was underway prior to construction starting, the dam core and dam length were built to accommodate the full size Rueter-Hess Reservoir, with the expectation the second application would be approved. If not, the dam would have been oversized for the approved storage capacity. Fortunately, that didn’t happen!
Initial photos in January 2006 of the construction of the outlet works are shown in Photos 1 and 2 (above). Photo 3 (below, left) shows the “borrow area,” upstream of the dam, where the materials for the dam were scraped and processed for building the dam. By May 2006, the dam core was being constructed and the outlet works were completed and the outlet tower installed (Photo 4, below, right).
The construction of the Frank Jaeger Dam and Rueter-Hess Reservoir was only part of the overall project, as the reservoir is located on Newlin Gulch, an ephemeral tributary of Cherry Creek. Since PWSD obtained water rights to divert in-priority water from Cherry Creek, infrastructure also had to be completed to move water from Cherry Creek into the Newlin Gulch drainage area within the reservoir area.
A diversion structure on Cherry Creek was built using Obermeyer gates to divert water into the pump station adjacent to the diversion structure. The diversion structure, known as Newlin Gulch Aqueduct No. 2, is shown in Photo 5 (above, left). The Obermeyer gates are used to divert water to the Cherry Creek Pump Station (CCPS) and the sluice gate (left side of the photo) is used to flush sediment downstream. The ROD requires PWSD to pass the lesser of the native flow in Cherry Creek or 1 cubic foot per second to maintain riparian habitat downstream. The water diverted from Cherry Creek is routed to a wet well beneath the CCPS, as shown in Photo 6 (above, right).
The pumps inside the CCPS that pump the water into a pipeline to Rueter-Hess Reservoir are shown above, in Photo 7 (left).
By early 2012, Rueter-Hess Reservoir was filling with water produced from in-priority flows in Cherry Creek that were pumped to the reservoir from the CCPS, native inflows from Newlin Gulch, and reusable effluent from PWSD’s water reclamation facilities. Reusable effluent is pumped to a discharge point on Cherry Creek, then diverted at the diversion structure into the CCPS wet well and pumped to Rueter-Hess Reservoir with the other in-priority Cherry Creek water.
Storage of water in Rueter-Hess Reservoir in 2012 is shown in Photo 8 (above, right), and the progression of storage over time will be discussed in our next blog, along with big plans for other uses of Rueter-Hess Reservoir over time.
Coming up next: The filling of Rueter-Hess Reservoir and other future plans!
Stay tuned!
If you need any help with developing new or supplemental water supplies, whether surface water or groundwater, LWS can help. Please give us a call (303-350-4090) or an email.
Bruce Lytle bruce@lytlewater.com
Chris Fehn chris@lytlewater.com
Ben Bader ben@lytlewater.com
Anna Elgqvist anna@lytlewater.com