Aspen Journalism’s notes on the May 15, 2017 Aspen city council work session on 
Aspen’s water future, prepared by Brent Gardner-Smith from the meeting video. 
 
 
During his presentation, Victor deWolfe of Deere and Ault told the council that 
storing water in mines would likely be expensive compared to other alternatives, 
because it was difficult to say what it would take to securely store the water in the 
old mines. 
 
Council member Adam Frish followed up on the potential cost of mine storage. 
 
As Frisch put it, “When you say things are expensive … we’re just starting down this 
path of solutions, let alone knowing the cost of what could happen to the solution 
that the city has filed for.” 
 
His question indicated that the current city council does not have a recent estimate 
of the cost of actually building the potential Castle and Maroon reservoirs. 
 
As Frisch also said, “We don’t even have a ballpark for the upper valley storage 
solution.” 
 
Frisch then asked, “Do we know how many acre feet we’re talking about again.” 
 
Margaret Medellin, a utilities portfolio manager with the city, responded by saying: 
“It’s close to 14,000 acre feet.” 
 
“Okay, that’s good enough,” Frisch said. “But we don’t have, how many zeros on that, 
do we?” 
 
“We have an old number, but it would be something that we would need to update,” 
Medellin said. 
 
It’s notable that Medellin said the city had an “old number” for the cost of the 
reservoirs, as the city has never completed a detailed feasibility study of either 
reservoir, nor has it previously referenced, at least in public, any cost estimates of 
the reservoirs. 
 
In regard to the storage being “close to 14,000 acre feet,” the potential Maroon 
Creek Reservoir would hold 4,567 acre feet of water and the potential Castle Creek 
Reservoir would 9,062 acre feet, for a combined total of 13,629 acre feet. 
 
Later in the meeting, during a discussion of the potential cost of developing in-situ 
storage, Don Deere of Deere and Ault told the council, “We’re looking at $10,000-anacre-foot-type costs for your storage, which in my experience, compared to all kinds 
of projects, is right there, about what a typical project costs.” 
 

 Using Deere’s $10,000-per-acre-foot rule of thumb, it would cost $140 million to 
build enough storage to hold 14,000 acre feet. 
 
At one point in the meeting, there seemed to be some confusion about what the 
14,000 acre-foot figure stood for. 
 
Aspen Mayor Steve Skadron, at one point in the discussion, asked Medellin, “What’s 
the 14,000 square foot, acre feet?” 
 
“That would be the combined storage right now for the conditional water rights on 
Castle and Maroon Creek,” she responded. 
 
“An acre a foot deep,” Frisch then said. 
 
“How deep is an acre foot?” Medellin said, seeking to understand Frisch’s question. 
 
“No, no an acre foot is an acre of 44,000 whatever,” Frisch said. 
 
"One foot deep,” she said. 
 
“One foot deep, that’s the volume,” Frisch said. “Okay.” 
 
An acre foot of water is equal to a foot of water covering an acre of land, or about 
326,000 gallons. 
 
After that exchange, council member Bert Myrin, who recently said he regretted his 
vote to direct staff to file for diligence on the two reservoirs in October, addressed 
the issue of how much water the city actually needs. 
 
“My top question … is, how much water?,” he said. “We’re talking 14,000, roughly, 
13,629 acre feet. And then Steve followed-up with, ‘What is that?’” 
 
“Part of the policy, I think, is acknowledging how much we need,” Myrin continued. 
“And that’s a enormous step that I think we haven’t taken. And 14,000 acre feet is 
about 80 years of worth of the snowmaking, at 192 acre feet per year, and that’s 
with zero additional precipitation.So we could take that 14,000 acre feet, fill it up 
with no … addition and you could make the snow that we make every year, 
currently, for the next 80 years. That’s how much water we’re talking about. And I 
think it would help us to have a better idea of the problem we’re trying to solve 
before we try and solve the problem.” 
 
“That’s what lead me to speak a month or so ago that I don’t support the ‘can and 
will’ message on the Maroon Creek,” Myrin said. “I think we’re pursuing something 
that, as Adam said recently about the trains, that even if they were free we may not 
have the trains. So, yes there is money, and yes we potentially we could do it, if we 
have permission from the president or whatever to build in the Bells, maybe we 

 could do this. The bigger question is, would we? Would we take free trains? Would 
we take this if it was there? We asked it in October … and we asked for a solution. 
Maybe we need to revisit what that is.” 
 
He also raised the costs of the city’s current approach. 
 
“It’s expensive,” he said. “Not just the end development of something but the 
pursuing of the many options. What is our budget for attorneys? What are spending 
on pursuing this?” 
 
And he addressed the recent settlement discussions. 
 
“I think there have been a couple of settlement options out there. One, um, I’d 
eventually like those to be public so that … the community knows . What those 
settlement offers are showing is the other side of the story … and sometimes it’s 
helpful to have those two sides shown. At some point, I’d like those to be public.” 
 
Later that day, Marcella Larsen of the Larsen Family Partnership, made public her 
family’s settlement proposal to the city. 
 
Myrin then said there were two questions facing the city. 
 
“We have two big questions to answer,” he said. “One is, how much? I suspect we 
could … just right away chop off 90 percent of this and focus on just ten percent of 
14,000 – 140 acres would be a high number. And that might give us more options to 
figure out for storage." 
 
Myrin said "140 acres," but ten percent of 14,000 is 1,400. It's not clear if he misspoke or had the math wrong. 
 
"And then, where," Myrin asked. "I think we maybe need to reassure the community 
it’s not going to be a dam on Maroon and Castle creek. And then we could move 
forward looking for a place for 140 acres, that’s not a dam on those two. Those two 
seem like simple policy issues, perhaps … something that would narrow down 
where we’re going.” 
 
Mayor Skadron, who was chairing the meeting, then said, “Okay, thanks, Bert." 
 
Frisch then followed up on Myrin’s remarks. 
 
“So, the overall … when we had the discussion about the study, I think the directive 
was let’s study the demand for the water. Which you just suggested 14,000 feet. 
We’re still looking into that because any number is based on some type of 
assumptions and we haven’t really gotten into those assumptions, because we have 
this really-hard-to-get-our-hands-around-climate-change-global-warming and then 
we have something, personally, just as hard to get to get my hands around, which is 

 17,000 people living in the city of Aspen. Not the valley, not the county, in the city of 
Aspen.” 
 
"It wasn’t clarified during the meeting where the 17,000 number was coming from. 
And so,” Frisch continued, “let’s make sure that we’re trying to solve the solution for 
the right amount of water as kind of best we can. And then there is the supply issue. 
How much we think is kind of coming down. And what we’re doing tonight is the 
alternative storage solutions beside building two dams up there, right.” 
 
“That’s right,” Medellin responded. 
 
“But these will all be done at kind of the same time, right? We’re not just …” 
 
“We have multiple contracts right now underway,” she said. “The contract with 
Headwaters Corp. … that’s actually the study looking at refining the demand and 
supply projections.” 
 
Toward the end of the meeting, Skadron sought to clarify the timing of getting a 
needs estimate. 
 
“What’s, in our process, where is the refining our projections for future water 
requirements happening?” he said. 
 
“That work is ongoing right now,” Medellin said. “We have Headwaters Corp. under 
contract to do both looking at the supply and the demand projections … I would say 
that we are very well underway with both of those efforts.” 
 
The discussion then turned to an upcoming community process about the potential 
reservoirs. 
 
"It would be nice if we could narrow down how much we need a little bit before we 
do that,” Myrin said. “Whether to store 14,000 acre feet. Sometimes it is difficult to 
participate in the community on an issue if you can’t grasp the amount that you’re 
working with.” 
 
If I can talk to that real quick,” said Scott Miller, the city’s director of public works. 
“I’m not the scientist, and I’m not the financial guy, but we’ve got that work in 
process. We’re probably not going to be able to come to council with ‘We need … 
12,123 acre feet,’ it’s probably going to be a range. And then, I think what George 
(Oamek of Headwaters Corp.) is going to talk to us about is, then, what is our 
appetite for risk? So then we’ll have a range of risks … I just want to set the 
expectations. That’s what we’re going to be bringing you, is a range of need, and a 
range of risk.” 
 
“I think that will helpful,“ Myrin replied, “if it’s ten to 20 percent of the 14,000 or 
whatever it’s going to be, but that’s also assuming we need to do that as storage. 

 Other alternatives are reclaimed water for that … (or) purchasing water rights from 
ag land or ranch land midvalley when that’s converted to development … “ 
 
"There is going to be a range of solutions, a range of need, and then you guys are 
going to … you’re really going to lead the discussion about where we go from here,” 
Miller said. 
 
Again, seeking to clarify the timing, Skadron asked, “The program you just 
discussed, one that will return to council … will come to us when?” 
 
“We don’t know what we don’t know,” Miller said. 
 
“So we’re well into it and … what Headwaters is doing … is putting together a range 
of risks, and then that begins the conversation with ‘how certain do we want to be,” 
Medellin added. “So I think that that conversation can begin, potentially, at the end 
of the summer, is what we’re hoping. But as Scott said to have the final answer, 
that’s going to take longer, but we’ll at least be able to start narrowing in on the 
range.” 
 
Frisch then again addressed the issue of need, or demand, being potentially driven 
by a growth of population in Aspen. 
 
“I think, personally, we’re about 95, 98 percent built out residentially as well as 
commercially, so unless there is a huge transfer of second homes, part-time homes 
into full-time ownership of epic proportions that’s never been seen in a community, 
in a resort community, anywhere, I don’t know how we get from 6,500 people fulltime to 17,000,” he said. 
 
“We need to come up with … a number that we should base a lot of long-term 
projections on,” Frisch also said. “And, off the cuff, it’s above 8,000 I really need to 
have a number … I really need to have someone dive in and explain where all these 
people are literally going to physically going to sleep. And so if the 14,000 need is 
ninety-percent based on climate change scenarios, then there is an interesting 
discussion. But if 90 percent of that 14,000 acre feet is based on that we’re going to 
have 17,000 people here, I think there is a whole other discussion to be hand. And I 
think it’s a better discussion, cause I don’t think we need 14,000 (acre) feet.” 
 
Medellin then responded to Frish. 
 
“To that point, that’s really the work that George is doing, is taking … the analysis 
that was done in the Wilson Water report,” Medellin said. “We really wanted to dive 
deeper into that number, and that’s part of the work that George is doing … really 
looking at more of the land component to that. We’re really hoping to dial that in 
and feel better about it.” 
 

 “You can’t solve a problem unless you know what it is,” Frish replied. “And … we’re 
coming up with some well-thought solutions, but we don’t even the magnitude of 
how much water we really need. And it’s hard enough to do the climate change stuff, 
but we do we have some control and some say over … a built environment. Trees 
don’t grow to the sky and cities do not grow forever. Let’s be realistic about what we 
can provide.”