About seven years ago, city officials envisioned a large-scale project that would protect Aurora’s residents from drought. They gathered on Oct. 8 to celebrate the result of that vision — the Prairie Waters Project.

Hundreds of people attended the Prairie Waters Project opening celebration last week at the Peter Binney Water Purification Facility near the Aurora Reservoir.

The project, which cost about $660 million and was $100 million under budget, will guarantee that Aurora residents have enough water to sustain them during droughts for decades.

It is expected to increase Aurora’s water supply by 20 percent and deliver up to 10,000 acre-feet of water per year. One acre-foot is more than 300,000 gallons, and enough water to supply two families of four for one year. Water officials are currently testing the water quality of the entire 34-mile long pipeline system, that runs from north of Brighton to Aurora.

For those city employees who helped develop the project, the feeling of having officially completed it is overwhelming.

“Water projects in the arid west don’t just happen,” said Mark Pifher, director of the city’s water department, at the celebration. “They require the natural resource itself — the water, many permit approvals, technological means to capture that water, to treat it and distribute it, and perhaps most importantly ... projects of this nature need the political will to bring them forward from design to fruition. This project possessed all of those attributes.”

The idea for the Prairie Waters Project came about in the wake of the 2002-03 drought, when the city’s water levels were at their lowest.

“What we realized back in 2002, when the drought was settling, was that the way we approached projects in the 19th and 20th centuries wasn’t going to solve city’s needs,” said Peter Binney, former water director who originally conceptualized the Prairie Waters