WEEK OF MAY 1, 2025
VOLUME 105 | ISSUE 10
$2
Littleton mulls fate of historic ditch flumes City weighs whether to spend big money on preservation effort BY ISABEL GUZMAN ISABEL@COTLN.ORG
house of customer inquiries and questions, which has been much more organized and we’re talking about it publicly … so that customers understand what was going on.” The city selected Cogsdale Corporation in January 2021 to revamp its utilities billing system, records show. Per the 2021 contract between Cogsdale and the City of Englewood, the total contract costs through implementation are $1,180,125, plus yearly costs of $108,175. Atkinson said Cogsdale is taking accountability for the issues and acknowledges the mistakes the vendor made when rolling out and implementing the billing system. She said there were many things that contributed to the issues, including working from home due to the pandemic, changing their process and, overall, underestimating the scope of the project.
What’s 4 feet deep, 6 feet wide and 26 miles long? The original City Ditch — one of Colorado’s earliest and most influential irrigation canals, constructed between 1864 and 1867 by the Capitol Hydraulic Company to bring much-needed water to the dry, dusty lands of the Denver metropolitan area. This hand-dug canal, also known as Smith’s Ditch, was engineered by Richard S. Little and financed by businessman John W. Smith, according to local historian Larry Borger. It stretched from its headgate near present-day Chatfield Reservoir, above Littleton, and ran roughly 26-to-27 miles northeast to Capitol Hill in Denver, relying solely on a 100-foot drop in elevation to move water without pumps. When it opened in 1867, the ditch enabled the growth of trees, sugar beet crops and neighborhoods, providing Denver with its primary irrigation source for more than 25 years. The ditch also supported a network of more than 1,000 lateral ditches, greening up city parks and supplying water to offshoots that irrigated cropland and street trees. Its construction and operation were so significant that the ditch is often called the “oldest working thing” in Denver, predating paved streets and railroads. Today, the City Ditch is mostly hidden from view. About 2.5 miles of the ditch remain open-channel, while the rest is mostly piped and buried.
SEE WATER BILLING, P16
SEE DITCH FLUMES, P10
The Charles Allen Water Treatment Plant, located on Layton Avenue at Windermere Street, treats Englewood’s drinking water that is pulled from the South PHOTO BY SCOTT GILBERT Platte River.
Official, vendor dissect water-billing blunders Shutoffs, late fees to be reinstated May 1 BY ELISABETH SLAY ESLAY@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Following multiple late-fee and shutoff extensions due to issues with Englewood’s new water billing system that began last summer, Englewood Utilities and the vendor of the system addressed the problems and their resolutions at the April 21 Englewood City Council study session. Pieter Van Ry, director of Englewood Utilities, and Kate Atkinson, vice president of Cogsdale Corporation, the vendor, addressed council. Shutoffs and late fees have been suspended since August last year but Van Ry said they will be reinstated May 1. “We recognize this has been incredibly
VOICES: 12 | PUZZLES: 23 | LIFE: 18
frustrating for our customers, and I want to personally apologize to our customers on behalf of utilities and the project team,” Van Ry said. “We’re trying to make it right for our customers” Hundreds of emails from September to mid-December last year, obtained by the Englewood Herald through a Colorado Open Records Act request, showed many people asking for help or clarification on issues such as inconsistent billing amount totals, access to accounts, receiving physical bills and long wait times when seeking assistance. “Billing is back on schedule, bills have updated the monthly water use, which was intended from the beginning,” Van Ry said. “We have set up some new protocols so that someone doesn’t send an email and have it sitting in an inbox for weeks without response because we’re overwhelmed by calls. We’ve got a more structured clearing-
ENGLEWOODHERALD.NET • A PUBLICATION OF COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA