Reservoir of Opportunity: How Chimney Hollow Supports Colorado’s Housing Future

It started, as these things often do, with a headline built for panic: Uranium found in new Colorado reservoir project.

Cue the mental images.  Glowing green ooze.  Geiger counters clicking wildly.  Some poor intern in a hazmat suit squinting into the blazing sun just west of Berthoud, Colorado.  The truth, of course, is much less cinematic (more on that in a moment!).  But in a part of the country where water and growth are locked in a delicate two-step, this story managed to overshadow one of the most important infrastructure projects Colorado has seen in a generation.

Let’s rewind.

Chimney Hollow Reservoir, nestled in the Larimer County foothills, has been in the works for decades.  It is part of the Colorado River Project, a strategy to store water in wet years and dole it out when the skies stop cooperating – which, as anyone who’s watched the Front Range in July knows, happens often enough.  The project adds 90,000 acre feet of storage.  That is enough water to serve 100,000 homes.

That is not a typo. One hundred thousand.

To build a reservoir, you need a dam.  To build a dam, you need rock. And in this case, some of the rock, sourced from a local quarry that was, until recently, living a quiet life in the hills, contains naturally occurring uranium. The kind that has been sitting there for a few million years without bothering anybody.

It is true, the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District discovered trace uranium during routine environmental monitoring and disclosed the findings in a press release. But here’s what matters most for community peace of mind: the uranium originates from naturally occurring granitic rock quarried for the dam, not from the regional drinking water supply. Yes, heavy stormwater runoff washed uranium-bearing water through the site during construction, which then made its way into on-site reservoirs. However, there is no ongoing risk to drinking water, and no radioactive surprises are expected. Northern Water has paused reservoir filling as teams develop mitigation strategies, including dilution, blending, or treatment, with regulatory oversight. That should have been the end of the story—and hopefully, it still will.

The real story in Colorado is the high cost of housing and the struggle to support the housing needs of the Missing Middle — workforce households earning roughly 80–120% of AMI who are stuck between too expensive single-family homes and out-of-reach rentals. This uranium-related distraction hit just as the region was gearing up for critical conversations about housing and water security.

Here’s the thing: in Colorado, housing doesn’t happen without water. And water doesn’t happen without infrastructure. That sounds obvious until you’re sitting across the table from a planning commission, trying to get permits for 300 homes, and someone asks you to demonstrate “firm yield.” Not theoretical water. Real water. Cold, hard acre-feet.

That’s what Chimney Hollow delivers.

For developers, the reservoir changes the equation. Municipalities in northern Colorado, places like Windsor, Johnstown, and Frederick, are under pressure to grow, but also to grow responsibly.  They can’t approve much needed new housing without knowing that they can serve them. And developers can’t invest tens of millions in projects if the water supply is a moving target.

Chimney Hollow is a bullseye. It gives predictability to an unpredictable landscape.

Of course, you wouldn’t necessarily know that if your newsfeed got stuck on the word “uranium.” But the city managers, developers, water attorneys, planners, and engineers quietly grinding away behind the scenes, they know. They’ve been planning around this project for years. Some of us have even built legal structures around it. (The phrases “Water Rights Exchange Agreement” or “Storage Unit Dedication and Use Agreement” may not make for compelling copy, but it’s a lot more useful than a panic button.)

The real story isn’t radioactive rock. It’s regional resilience. Chimney Hollow Reservoir is a gap filler. It fills a gap created by drought.  It helps fill gaps in housing supply, and it is a generational investment in northern Colorado’s future.  This is the kind of thing that lets cities say ‘yes’ to housing when the climate says ‘maybe’ and the economy is hinting at ‘no.’

And it’s happening, despite the noise.

In the end, every great infrastructure story has two sides: the public narrative and the quiet trench work of planners, builders, and advisors. I tend to live closer to the second group. My clients are the ones trying to navigate water rights, development agreements, dedication triggers, and cost recovery mechanisms, all the invisible scaffolding that makes growth possible.

They don’t need headlines. They need clarity. They need people who understand where legal theory meets dirt and pipe.

So yes, uranium was found in a rock. But the reservoir’s still getting built. The water will still flow. And northern Colorado will still grow, if we keep our eyes on the long game.