Denver Water can finish its Gross Dam expansion and fill the controversial reservoir in western Boulder County, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday, lifting an injunction by a lower court judge and confirming the dam’s permits as sound.
The appeals court said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had acted responsibly in issuing construction permits for the $600 million expansion, which is largely complete and will be filled using water rights Denver holds in the Colorado River basin on the western side of the Continental Divide.
While a federal district judge in Denver had issued the injunction after declaring the Corps had failed to consider less-damaging alternatives, or the fact that climate change could rob Colorado of river water, the appeals court rejected that view.
“We do not think the Corps’s choice of cost methodology was arbitrary or capricious,” the appeals court ruling said. The plaintiffs, including nonprofit Save the Colorado, argued the Corps rejected clear evidence of climate change, but the appeals court ruled the Corps gave the research fair consideration.
“The Corps considered — and rejected — the reliability of that and similar studies, one of which showed that in the Colorado River Basin, ‘no consistent trends in annual precipitation have been detected over the last 100 years,’” the appeals court said.
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