This week the spunky Boulder Weekly took a critical and worthwhile look at the Gross Reservoir expansion in Boulder County, widely held as a collaborative achievement between the usual opposite forces of water in Colorado.

Colorado Politics told you about the historic deal last month to raise the dam by 131 feet so Denver Water can capture what it’s entitled to, in a bid to meet the demands of Front Range growth. The deal got support from Trout Unlimited and other environmental organizations because of the concessions the state’s largest municipal water utility provided.

But notes Boulder Weekly’s Matt Cortina:

It’s worth noting that Denver Water, as well as the Walton Family Foundation, who supports the privatization of water, are financial sponsors of Trout Unlimited. The Waltons, of Walmart fame, also fund American Rivers, Colorado Water Trust, Conservation Colorado, Environmental Defense Fund, The Nature Conservancy and more. In total, the Waltons have invested tens of millions of dollars into the Colorado River, while simultaneously promoting private water markets as a way to conservation.

Yeah, it’s that kind of story.

Cortina does a good job balancing the competing views of the project that has cleared nearly all its regulatory hurdles. He tells us the reservoir will capture 25 billion more gallons from the Colorado River, which amounts to six times the size of Boulder Reservoir.

Save the Colorado River and other groups could sue by claiming the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act by failing to consider alternatives to supply the needed water, such as conservation

The article veers into the impact climate change could have on water in Colorado, questioning whether the expansion does any good if there’s not enough water to fill the reservoir.

“The climate models really don’t agree on climate warming on precipitation, as to whether it’ll have more or less precipitation,” Denver Water’s Jim Lochead told the Boulder Weekly. “We do know and we factored in the Earth is getting warmer and it will have impacts. So things like more rain, less snow, earlier runoff, increased severity of storm events, perhaps longer droughts.

“If you add all of those up, what that actually argues for is the need for additional flexibility and reliability and storage capacity.”

Trout Unlimited told Cortina it negotiated the best it could, given Denver Water’s right to take the water.

“Anything we got is more than we were (originally) offered. ” Kirk Klancke, president of Trout Unlimited’s Colorado chapter told Cortina. “So maybe it was a bad deal but we clawed our way into everything we have.”