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Colorado water

State Sen. Ellen Roberts is right: What is needed is new thinking on the subject

Traveling the state with the Legislatures’ Water Resources Review Committee, state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, is in search of new ideas to address Colorado’s water needs. Good. New approaches are exactly what the situation requires.

Roberts introduced a bill in the last legislative session to limit the size of new Front Range homes’ lawns if their water use resulted in dried-up agricultural land. That bill turned into a study, but it is an example of thinking beyond traditional uses and political fights.

In what is likely an apocryphal tale, a famous criminal was asked why he robbed banks. He answered by saying that is where the money is. And on that level – and perhaps only that level – Colorado water is simple: If more water is needed to serve the state’s growing population, it will have to come from the Western Slope, from agriculture or from both. The preponderance of Colorado’s water comes from the Western Slope and a similarly outsized proportion of what is used in the state goes to agriculture.

The problem, at least from a Western Slope or ag point of view, is that the people, the money – and the votes – are all concentrated within the state along Colorado’s Front Range or downstream in the Lower Basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California.

So, while legislators from rural Colorado have fought a valiant rear-guard action to preserve Western Slope and agricultural water, they are increasingly outgunned. And as the West becomes more populated and even more urbanized, particularly along the I-25 corridor in Colorado, that imbalance will only increase.

Simply standing up for traditional water allocations and uses will likely only go so far. If we are to avoid drying-up ag farm land or losing Western Slope water, new ideas will be needed.

Storage and conservation are crucial, but beyond enabling Front Range growth, any efforts along those lines must also serve agriculture, recreation and the health of riparian habitat. Can water be made to do double duty?

More to the point, can Colorado’s eight river basins work together? If the Front Range takes more water from the Colorado River drainage via transmountain diversions, the Western Slope may end up being required to send some of its water out of state to meet Colorado’s downstream obligations. Can some of that come from increased irrigation efficiencies enabled by technology funded by thirsty Front Range communities? Could rural areas somehow help with urban conservation measures in order to keep more of their water?

The statewide plan Roberts’ committee is developing may answer Colorado’s water needs. More likely, it will not, but it could stimulate the kind of thinking that will help. That would be victory enough.



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