The Southern Delivery System — one of the largest water projects ever in the western United States — went online April 27 and began delivering water to customers April 28.

The 50-mile pipeline links the City of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and three neighboring communities, with the Pueblo Reservoir on the Arkansas River. The line will carry water needed for continued growth in the area, supplement existing raw water supplies, and protect against future droughts.

With a capacity of 50 million gallons of water per day, SDS becomes part of a system that will serve as many as 750,000 residents through 2040.

“SDS is one of the most important projects many of us will ever work on,” says Jerry Forte, CEO of Colorado Springs Utilities. “This is a legacy project — one that benefits so many people today, tomorrow and for generations to come. This is an amazing day for our organization and for southern Colorado.”

Construction of the 66-inch line started in 2010. The $825 million project was completed earlier this year more than $160 million under budget.

“One time and under budget are words rarely used to describe large infrastructure projects,” says John Fredell, SDS program director. “We adopted a philosophy that ‘these are ratepayer dollars’ and managed the project with exceptional rigor. It was the responsible approach to spending hundreds of millions of dollars of public money.”

Fredell is proud of the value engineering approach taken on all aspects of the project.

“We got ideas from many people on how to scrub this project and make everything more efficient,” Fredell says. “We looked for ways to do things better, smarter, faster.”

To read more about the Southern Delivery System, read “Planning, Partnerships Make 50-mile Water Pipeline Successful.”