Cost of Colorado dam project doubles to $2.7 billion as towns fear the price

By Michael Booth | The Colorado Sun

Northern Water has halted multiple contract bids while it scales back designs to hold together a coalition of water agencies

Northern Water has halted some design and construction contracts and is cutting back its multibillion-dollar, two-dam supply project after its biggest customer said it was pulling out, officials said, as they detailed how the budget for their decades-long ambition suddenly jumped to $2.69 billion from $2 billion. 

Four design-and-build contracts for the Northern Integrated Supply Project, meant to serve growth in 15 communities and water agencies, were pulled from the bidding process for at least three to four months while engineers consider how costs could be cut, Northern Water General Manager Brad Wind said in an interview Monday. The Fort Collins-Loveland Water District, serving about 60,000 people, was responsible for about 20% of the water supply and construction costs, the largest share, when it said Aug. 8 that it would no longer participate in the project.

Inflation in construction expenses, including salaries and materials, legal and permitting costs extended by environmental challenges, and a $100 million mitigation settlement with Save the Poudre all sent project costs soaring in 2025, Wind said. 

“We’re taking a brief pause,” Wind said, given Fort Collins-Loveland saying it would withdraw from NISP and was securing other water supplies to meet growth. “But that’s given us an opportunity to step back and begin processes to resize the project, something that might be a little smaller, do some value engineering associated with that in preparation for continuing on with the project. But it’s certainly still a very viable project and an important one for the region.”

NISP isn’t the only water project that is seeing costs rise. 

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