Water — Available, Valuable, Useful

In the arid West, water you can count on is the scarcest thing a project can own. Butte Valley's water comes from decreed rights in two parts that fit together. Orlando Reservoir No. 2, an off-channel reservoir, stores water in the winter, November 15 to March 15. The Butte Valley Ditch carries direct-flow water in the irrigation season, March 15 to November 15, under Priority No. 1 on the Huerfano River, dating from 1862.

Between them, water is available in every month of the year. Restoring the reservoir to its full decreed capacity of 3,110 acre-feet brings back storage that has gone unused.

The same water is worth far more growing vegetables under glass than flooding an open field. A Dutch-style greenhouse grows 50 to 80 kilograms of tomatoes per square meter a year, against 3 to 8 in an open field, and uses about 22 litres of water per kilogram, against about 60 on drip in the field. Every acre-foot grows several times the food, and that food sells fresh, year round, close to the market.

Front Range cities already pay top dollar for farm water in the Arkansas basin. In 2024 the City of Aurora paid $80 million for a 4,806-acre Otero County farm and the canal and reservoir water that came with it. Senior water that is available all year, sitting beside the interstate, is the kind of asset that price is paid for.

One water supply serves the whole campus. The greenhouses grow under the existing irrigation decree, so the water stays in the valley and goes to work from the first planting. The power plant and the data center draw from the same rights, with closed-loop or adiabatic cooling that recirculates water instead of evaporating it away.

Later, homes and larger industrial use come through a change case in Colorado's Water Court, which moves water to full municipal use the way Pueblo's water serves its city. Each step raises what the same acre-foot does.

This water system has been rebuilt before. In 2011 and 2012 the Orlando Reservoir No. 2 dam's outlet works were rebuilt with a Colorado Water Conservation Board loan, and the diversion gates upstream and downstream were repaired. The assets were later stolen, and the infrastructure built for them was lost.

The plan rebuilds it: a proper diversion and ditch system to deliver the 1862 direct-flow right, and the reservoir brought back to its full decreed 3,110 acre-feet by raising the dam or removing the sediment. Like a classic car that needs restoring, the water is worth far more than the cost of putting it back in working order.