A Coyote Gulch reader sent this link to an article (pdf) Dry Times Ahead from 5280 Magazine written by Patrick Doyle and Natasha Gardner that deals with the current state of water in Colorado. Thanks for the link Peter. From the article:
Go into the kitchen. Turn on your faucet. Nice, right? Last winter, those drops of water most likely fell as snowflakes, somewhere high in the Rocky Moun- tains. Maybe up by Winter Park; maybe up above Dillon; maybe in the foothills. The snow melted, found a river, was piped into the city by Denver Water, and right now you can turn a knob and fill a glass with pristine snowmelt. There’s just one problem, and it’s a big one: Colorado’s water is running out. Fast. Just 20 years from now, we’ll have packed another 2 million people into the state, on top of Colorado’s current 5 million residents. That’s 2 million water guzzlers taking showers, washing clothes, watering gardens, hosing down lawns, and sucking down water after their workouts. Those 2 million people will run our streams and wells dry: Experts say we’ll be short 630,000 acre-feet of water annually. That’s about the same amount of H2O that Denver and the suburbs currently gulp down every year. Read that again: We need to find enough water for Denver and the ’burbs, over again, in the next 20 years. And it’s only going to get worse: By 2050, our state’s population will likely double to 10 million thirsty souls.