Thornton has plenty of water – it’s just in the wrong place. And that’s a very Colorado story.
Dec 4, 2022
Thornton needs water.
Developers are scrapping homebuilding projects out of fears that the city can’t guarantee them a water tap in the next few years.
Thornton has water.
It’s waiting here at a headgate where the Cache la Poudre’s pristine high Rockies snowmelt is siphoned off into a farm ditch and reservoir network, 70 miles north of Thornton in western Larimer County. Thornton secretly started buying the water off farmland far from home in 1986, and now owns about 19,000 acres — and the accompanying water shares — across Larimer and Weld counties.
