John Gauthiere, Paul Wood and Bill Gillard had a good meeting with Mayor Gates yesterday. The Mayor was presented with much information that he promised he would read. He was very respectful of the citizens but did express that the Council needed to trust the Water Board.
John, Paul and Bill also met with Councilman Michael Fitzsimmons on Monday who was also very respectful and considerate and seemed like he would listen to reason. He also expressed that he would like to hear more on this issue.
Both men expressed that they did not understand the 200 page financial contract that the City of Greeley would be entering into in March. I guess I would just like to ask all the Council Members, if your personal finances were involved, would you sign this agreement?
John and I watched the Water Board meeting last night. It was interesting that when staff was talking about making changes to Greeley’s non potable system, they said that they would have to check with Wingfoot before any changes could be made. Since when has Greeley needed to check with another party, other than its own citizens, to make needed changes to our system?

John and Paul also participated in a Zoom meeting Monday night with Weld Air and Water. Councilman Tommy Butler was also in attendance. Weld Air and Water is very concerned with the proposed, and already approved, oil and gas activity at Terry Ranch in the vicinity of our future water supply.

You can read the story about Flint Michigan’s water problems on our Resource Page.

John Gauthiere and Paul Wood had an active week. They met with 2 Councilmen. They spoke by phone to Tommy Butler and met in person with Ed Clark. Both are expressing their intention to vote for the Terry Ranch proposal at this point.

This coming week John and Paul have a face to face meeting with Councilman Michael Fitzsimmons and Mayor John Gates.

The Council vote will be in mid March. We all need to contact Council to express our opinion on keeping Greeley’s water the “best in the nation”. greeleygov.com/council for emails and phone numbers.

We will be on a zoom meeting with Weld Air and Water on Monday night.

John G. Gauthiere, P.E.

The Greeley City Council is on the verge of a massive transfer of wealth and power from the Citizens of Greeley to Wingfoot, LLC.  Wingfoot, LLC is acting as a corporate veil for the Akin family and its investment banking company, Talkot Capital, LLC.  Depending on the value placed on an acre-foot of water, between $34,000 and $60,000 per acre-foot, the wealth transferred from Greeley Citizens to Wingfoot, Akin, Talkot (WAT) will be somewhere between $412 million and $727 million.  

When Mayor John Gates signs the Terry Ranch/Wingfoot Agreement, WAT will gain ownership of 12,121 credits which represent 12,121 acre-feet of water which WAT can sell to real estate developers who will be allowed to use the credits to satisfy the City’s water rights dedication requirements when development occurs.  WAT will have the power to sell the credits to developers at whatever price they choose. 

WAT plans to provide water credits to developers through an arrangement in which the developer purchases a credit claimed to be worth one acre foot of water in the Terry Ranch aquifer.  The developer would then deliver that credit to the City of Greeley for the right to develop land and create a water demand that the City of Greeley will be obligated to supply in perpetuity.  Should the Terry Ranch aquifer fail to deliver safe, cost effective drinking water in the future, or any water at all, existing Greeley water customers will be left with the responsibility of delivering water from Greeley’s existing water supply.  In other words, Greeley’s existing water supply is the collateral for this Terry Ranch/Wingfoot deal.

WAT will also be allowed to sell the water credits to investors, thereby creating a speculative secondary market in Greeley’s water.

WAT will have an exclusive and monopolistic power that up until now existed only with the City of Greeley.  The City of Greeley has historically administered water rights acquisition from developers in a fair, benevolent, and responsible manner for the benefit of the developers and the needs of the citizens, as well as the protection of the existing and future water customers. Will WAT be as fair and benevolent?  What course of action or appeal will the developers have if WAT’s actions stray from the perception of fairness?  Has WAT ever been accused of an act of greed or inappropriate behavior?  Judge for yourself.

On September 16, 2013, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued Talkot Capital an “Order Instituting Cease-And-Desist Proceedings pursuant to Section 21C of the Securities Exchange Act Of 1934, making findings, and imposing a Cease-and-Desist Order and Civil Penalty”[1].  According to the New York Times, Talkot Capital was accused of stock market manipulation and obtaining “illicit profits”.  Talkot Capital paid a settlement and avoided any omission of guilt.  Talkot Capital was one of 22 hedge funds and investment banking firms accused in the 2013 SEC investigation.[2]   

What will the City of Greeley get out the deal with WAT?  The City of Greeley will get a water right (Case No. 11-CW-275) from Wingfoot which authorizes Greeley to withdraw and use the ground water from the non-tributary Upper Laramie aquifer underlying the Terry Ranch in the Cheyenne Basin.  At a 1% draw-down of the estimated store of water, Greeley will only be able to withdraw about 12,000 acre-feet in any one year.  And it will not be possible to recharge the aquifer with the fast running Poudre River spring runoff, as the water cannot be treated and injected into the aquifer fast enough.  For this, you would need a larger storage reservoir such as the enlarged Milton Seaman Reservoir.  How ironic!

In order to make Terry Ranch ground water accessible, the citizens of Greeley will be burdened with hundreds of millions of dollars of debt to build the 40 miles of pipeline, wells, pump stations and the Terry Ranch Water Treatment Plant.  This debt is based on a “conceptual level” (very preliminary) construction cost estimate which could range as high as $430 million dollars.  And later, the City will need to spend even more money to complete the aquifer recharge facilities bringing the total estimated cost, considering that the estimate was based on only “conceptual planning”, to as much as $759 million.[3] 

This is an enormous amount of money for a questionable and inferior water supply!  The Terry Ranch aquifer is already contaminated with uranium exceeding the Safe Drinking Water Act limits and is subject to considerable risk of additional contamination from oil and mineral exploration and extraction.  Azarga Uranium Mining Corporation  has plans to conduct mining operations in the Cheyenne Basin.  In fact, Azarga has acquired 100 percent of Powertech Uranium Mining mineral rights just South of Terry Ranch.  Azarga’s mineral rights holdings amount to approximately 10 square miles near the Terry Ranch[4]. 

Paraphrasing Water & Sewer Board Chairman Harold Evans’ chapter in the recently published book, Confluence by Gregory Hobbs Jr. and Michael Welsh, Greeley’s initial efforts to supply water to the town back in the late 1890’s with shallow and deep groundwater wells proved to be unreliable.  In the 1980’s, I personally witnessed one of the remaining early wells in the downtown area which was still flowing with bubbles of methane gas.  The well water caught fire when a match was held near it. 

By 1907, the wise people of Greeley looked to the high quality snow melt in the Rocky Mountains for their future water supply. The Cache la Poudre River proved to be a wise and successful investment that still has some remaining potential for development through the enlargement of Milton Seaman Reservoir (MSR). 

Why is the Water Board, Council and staff so dead set on this Terry Ranch deal?   Why is the City willing to involve Talkot Capital in the financing of our future water supply?  The quality of the water they are offering is inferior to what we have and can obtain through an MSR enlargement.  Why do we need a middleman (Wingfoot) to finance a water deal when the Colorado Water Conservation Board offers such low interest rate loans and is looking out for the public good?

Why is the City trying so hard to kill the MSR enlargement project, our best chance to keep the clean mountain water flowing to Greeley?  Could it be that the conventional financing of an MSR enlargement does not offer the opportunity for the Akin Family and others to profit from monetizing the City of Greeley’s water assets as does the most unusual financing scheme offered by WAT?  According to Chairman Harold Evans “the Akin family is looking for a long term source of income”.  This will happen at the expense of the Greeley citizens and water customers.

The details of this financing scheme will be explored in future articles.

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[1] United States of America Before the Securities and Exchange Commission, Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Release No 70406 / September 16,2013, Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-15484, In the Matter of Talkot Capital LLC, Respondent

[2] The New York Times, Firms to Pay $14 Million to Settle, By Alexandra Stevenson, September 17, 2013 2:29pm

[3] Upper Range Cost Estimate from City Presentation dated December 16, 2020.

[4] Azarga Website

In former Mayor Tom Norton’s Nextdoor post regarding the Terry Ranch project, he gave his Mayoral blessing to the project as an “excellent opportunity for Greeley…” He also touted Greeley’s existing water system as “the best municipal water system in the state of Colorado”.  And on that we can agree.  And yet he proposes to drastically change the source of Greeley’s drinking water to a uranium containing aquifer. 

He says that Terry Ranch “is the most cost effective alternative for additional storage and quality water presently available to the city”. However, the cost estimates that the staff has come up with for the Milton Seaman Reservoir (MSR) enlargement appear grossly exaggerated in order to make the Terry Ranch project look affordable.  The City has not provided the detailed cost estimates to us even though we have requested them several times.  Their excuse is that it is “pre-decisional”.

Mayor Tom says that “The city needs all of its present assets”  yet, according to Water Board Chairman Harold Evans, the city is willing to let the conditional decrees of almost 15,000 acre feet of water worth $500 million on MSR be abandoned (die). 

John and I hiked about 4 miles around the west side of Seaman Reservoir this past weekend.  The city fathers chose an outstanding spot for this reservoir.  The  rocky abutments appear to be almost begging for an enlargement.  Being that there is already an existing reservoir, an enlargement to 53,000 acre-feet would be much less expensive than staff’s estimated $500 million and would have minimal environmental impact.  How can MSR cost this much when the NISP project at four times the size is expected to only cost $1 billion to $1.2 billion?

Tom Norton said that “Greeley is fortunate to have a citizen Waterboard and a City Council who have looked at this project in extreme detail…”.  The water board and city council are indeed volunteers who have sacrificed their time for the benefit of Greeley.  However, the city council members, who will be making the final decision on this issue, have no innate knowledge of this project and have only the talking points that staff has put together and repeated to them time and time again.  However, they do also have the resistance from the public, who have their own very good talking points, and their common sense that uranium is harmful to the human body, to help in their decision making.

I believe that some council members have young children. These young children will be drinking that uranium laced ground water much longer than they will. 

And think about who is presenting the talking points to the council.  It is the water & sewer department top level staff, who do not live in Greeley, and will not be drinking the water nor paying for it. 

City council exists to serve the citizens of Greeley who do not want to give up their clean mountain drinking water for the worry of uranium in their water.

Mayor Tom says that “many questions needed to be answered but through the expertise of water engineers and geologist from both the private sector and the city staff all of these concerns have been addressed”.  Then why do the citizens still not feel assured?

John sat down for a 2 hour q & a session with these staff and consultants and Water Board Chairman Harold Evans and most of his questions were not answered to his satisfaction.  On separate occasions John has also met in person with Tom Norton, Roy Otto and Water and Sewer Director Sean Chambers.

In his post, Mayor Norton did not once mention that the Terry Ranch water contains uranium and that a whole different treatment process will be required to treat it and that a 40 mile pipeline will have to be built to capture it.  In addition, Mayor Norton did not mention the treatment cost which will amount to millions of dollars per year.  City staff has suggested that the exorbitant treatment cost could possibly be offset by selling the uranium which is mined during the treatment process to a third party.  So Terry Ranch would really be our drinking water source and a uranium mine all in one!  Is this really the least environmentally damaging alternative to Milton Seaman Reservoir enlargement?  People are part of the environment too!

Mayor Norton did not once mention that, just adjacent to Terry Ranch, to the west, on top of the recharge area for the aquifer, is a Fort Collins’ sewage sludge disposal area that Norton supposedly designed.  This sludge can contain pharmaceutical breakdown products, PFAS, and pseudo estrogens from plastics which will not be filtered out by the aquifer.

And we have not yet gotten into the financial aspects of the Wingfoot deal which are ridiculously scary for the City’s future financial health and prosperity.  This deal has a huge default clause in it that, if enacted, could break the finances of the City.  This deal is being financed by investment bankers who look after their own well being and profit, rather than by a state agency like the Colorado Water Conservation Board, that loans money at a very low interest rate to benefit the public and could finance the MSR enlargement.

The City of Greeley’s Terry Ranch website which Mayor Norton referred you to is very skewed to the City staff’s point of view on this issue.  The city’s website also omits significant information, as did Mayor Norton’s post.

This Wingfoot/Terry Ranch deal needs to be rejected and the permitting for Milton Seaman Reservoir restarted.   It is time to let your voice be heard in opposition to the Terry Ranch deal.  Go to greeleygov.com/council and scroll to the bottom of the page for emails and phone numbers of council and mayor.

Please go to the Resources Menu for this lively discussion.

Please feel free to use this letter to send to mayor and council as is, or make what ever changes you feel are appropriate for your situation. Just please send a letter!

November 27, 2020

Honorable Mayor and Council,

I wish to express my dismay at an action taken by the City of Greeley Water & Sewer Board concerning the future quality of Greeley’s water.  As I understand it, Greeley may well undertake the pursuit of ground water for the majority of Greeley’s future drinking water supply.

As a Greeley water customer, this is most troubling.  Since we moved to Greeley, we have had the privilege of having the best drinking water in the country.  Greeley has some of the best and most numerous water rights in Northern Colorado.  I don’t understand why the city is now pursuing ground water with all the surface water rights that it owns.

Our family depends on having clean drinking water for our health.  Uranium is an undesirable element to have in drinking water even if it is naturally occurring.  There is no such thing as naturally occurring uranium in the human body.  I think that would be called a cancer risk.  Even if you attempt to completely remove the uranium,  you may not be successful and will decide to blend it with the Bellvue water.  The perception of uranium in the water will always be there, and we will worry about the health risk to our family.

I  implore you not to go down this path.  This will forever change the perception of the quality of Greeley’s water and hurt our family’s health and peace of mind.

Aside from the negative perception of the water, the increased cost of treatment may significantly impact our water bill, as well as require a point of use device on our home to remove remaining contaminants from our water.

I think that we should renew our efforts to obtain a permit to enlarge Milton Seaman Reservoir.  Greeley possesses adequate water rights to see us through the next decade or so until the Milton Seaman Enlargement Project can be built.

Please rethink the Water Board’s position and make the right decision for the citizens of Greeley and other Greeley water customers who depend on quality drinking water for their health and peace of mind.

Please vote no on the Terry Ranch/Wingfoot Plan.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Here are some thoughts to keep in mind as we celebrate Thanksgiving and struggle to preserve our mountain water supply. Citizens are the guardians of their water. Corruption impoverishes the many, enriches a few.

The following quote from Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is especially fitting at this time when we are under the veil of Covid and cannot freely associate with friends and neighbors.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke

in History, Politics | March 13th, 2016

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”― Edmund Burke (in a letter addressed to Thomas Mercer).

That’s the short version, attributed to Burke. A longer version reads as follows:

Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

–Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents 82-83 (1770) in: Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 1, p. 146 (Liberty Fund ed. 1999).