Broomfield laps up some Greeley water

The city of Broomfield has bought Colorado-Big Thompson Project water owned by the Western Sugar Cooperative for its Greeley sugar processing plant for $7.65 million.

The city paid about $10,000 for each of the 766 shares or a little more than 525 acre-feet, which is enough water for a year's supply of slightly more than 1,000 homes.

Harold Evans, chairman of Greeley's Water and Sewer Board, said the sale did not surprise him, noting Broomfield has been actively trying to buy water through Craig Harrison, a water broker, from Fort Collins. Evans said Greeley, which is the largest municipal owner of C-BT water, could not buy the shares from Western because the city already owns the maximum amount allowed.

The Colorado-Big Thompson Project, which delivers water to northern Colorado from the Western Slope, is administered by the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District. It provides a supplemental water supply to municipalities, industry and agriculture in the eight-county area of northern and northeastern Colorado. The city and county of Broomfield is included within the project's boundaries.

The district's board of directors approved the sale at its last meeting, said Brian Werner, spokesman for Northern Water. Greeley, he added, owns 22,522 units of C-BT water.

Evans said the sale will not have an effect on the expected announcement by Leprino Foods to build a cheese factory on the site of the sugar factory, 1302 1st Ave. Western Sugar closed its processing facility in 2002 and it, along with its shares of C-BT water, was put up for sale.

Evans said the city's water board reached an agreement with Leprino earlier this year which would provide Leprino with about 1,100 acre-feet of water for its new plant. That's water, he said, the city bought back in the early 1990s.

"That's water that available to the council to use as an economic development incentive," Evans said. The city, he said, would sell the water to Leprino at the cost it bought it, plus the cost of financing from bonds that were used to originally buy the water.

"The key is that we're not losing anything as far as our cost to do something like this," Evans said, who added the so-called industrial water bank has been used twice in the past, to lure the then ConAgra Foods to keep its corporate headquarters in Greeley -- that's now JBS Swift & Co. -- and for the State Farm Insurance Cos. new regional headquarters complex at Promontory in west Greeley.