BOULDER’S WATERWORKS

The patchwork repairs to Goose Lake Dam in the 1980s produced a very strange-looking
structure that did not stop the seepage, contributing to crumbling and failing on the upstream
shotcrete face.
One spring morning in 1994, Craig Skeie, the City’s Source Water Facilities Manager,
walked out onto the deck of his house at Lakewood Reservoir with coffee cup in hand, to
find that the reservoir had, overnight, turned into a mudflat. The spillway structure had
failed dramatically, causing the reservoir to empty into North Boulder Creek.
The City-owned house at Lakewood Reservoir also had problems that needed attention,
since it was found to have a cobbled-together electrical system that was a fire danger,
along with two-by-four rafters perilously holding up the roof. In 1995, extraordinarily-high
streamflows during spring runoff caused the disintegrating diversion structures for both
Lakewood and Silver Lake Pipelines to collapse.
The City rebuilt the Lakewood Reservoir spillway in 1994, then rebuilt a large section of
the Lakewood Reservoir Dam in 1996. Boulder reconstructed the Silver Lake and Lakewood
diversion structures on North Boulder Creek and added measurement devices for
instream flow releases.
Also rebuilt was the Como Creek diversion. A new screened inlet for the Lakewood Pipeline
was installed in Lakewood Reservoir in 1998, and a new valve house at the reservoir, complete
with a new pressure-reduction (Mokveld) valve, was completed in 1999. The City’s
house for the Facilities Manager at Lakewood was rehabilitated and remodeled, as the
septic system at the house had failed. In addition, the walls and floors of the caretaker’s
house at Silver Lake were replaced, along with the septic system for that house and for the
bunkhouse.
By the 1990s, Boulder had acquired the majority of shares in the Farmers’ Ditch Company.
Most of Boulder’s shares had been changed in use through Water Court proceedings
to allow diversion at the City’s upper pipeline intakes on Boulder Creek instead of at the
Farmers’ Ditch head gate. However, a group of the City’s Farmers’ Ditch shares that were
included in a change decree issued in 1989 were required to be delivered through the
Farmers’ Ditch to Boulder Reservoir for Boulder’s use.
In order to allow this use, the City constructed a larger outlet from the ditch into Boulder
Reservoir in 1993. In addition to the City having an on-going interest in the condition of
Farmers’ Ditch, there still are hundreds of small shareholders in the Company that rely on
the ditch to deliver irrigation water for use on property stretching from Mapleton Hill to
above Boulder Reservoir. Boulder worked with the Farmers’ Ditch Company in 1995 and
1996 to complete the first thorough head-to-tail cleaning of the ditch since the 1960s.
Goose Lake Dam underwent an extensive rehabilitation in 1999. A geo-membrane was
attached to the upstream face and covered by an earth-fill and rock-fill slope, significantly
altering the appearance of the upstream face. Seepage was reduced considerably. 186
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