September 5, 2023
Jack Ethredge could see the future. It was 1985, and Ethredge, then the city manager of Thornton, Colorado, understood that sooner or later, the Denver suburb would need more water. The population was booming, businesses were flocking to the Mountain West, and Thornton had no major lakes or rivers of its own, nor any meaningful amount of groundwater to draw upon, a fluke of geology and geography. The city had drilled a dozen or so wells over the years, but the groundwater’s limited supply...