Lake County, Aurora negotiate IGA renewal as Box Creek, storage and local water rights loom

Lake County water staff and officials from the City of Aurora spent a work session outlining terms being negotiated in a renewed intergovernmental agreement that would formalize delivery of 40 acre‑feet of Aurora water to Lake County each year and clarify how the county may use storage and augmentation to operate a new county water enterprise.

The discussion, led by Water Resource Manager Bryce Erlich and Rick Kinitz, basin manager for Aurora, focused on three linked items: the IGA renewal, near‑term storage options including using Hayden Meadows Recreational Pond, and the long‑range possibility of participating in the Box Creek Reservoir project. "Acre feet is kind of the standard unit we use in water supply. It's 326,000 gallons roughly," Erlich told the board while explaining units and augmentation concepts used in the county's plan.

The IGA under negotiation would preserve an annual delivery obligation from Aurora of 40 acre‑feet — described in the meeting as a firm delivery Aurora owes Lake County under the parties' existing arrangements — and would add flexibility on where Aurora may release that water on the county's behalf. "Aurora has an obligation to release that much water to you, 40 acre feet every year," Kinitz told the commissioners. Staff said the agreement also aims to put current delivery practices — where Aurora has sometimes released the water in increments throughout the year — into a written right that Lake County can rely on for its augmentation accounting.

Why it matters: Lake County's 1998 change case and blanket augmentation decree (filed as 98CW173 and finally adjudicated in 2017) provides the legal basis for the county's augmentation plan and for…