From The Greeley Tribune (Eric Brown) via Windsor Now!:
Arapahoes’s purchases, negotiated over the past couple of years and finalized in September, still leave a couple of major questions yet to be answered. The county must win approval from water courts to use the water for municipal purposes and it must figure out a way to get the water from here to there. According to documents, Steve Witter, water resources manager for the Arapahoe County Water and Wastewater Authority, said during a presentation at an authority board meeting in September that 43 percent of the 4,400 acre-feet of water purchased by United Water and Sanitation District — on behalf of the authority — came from the Poudre River, while the other 57 percent came from the South Platte River. In an interview Monday, Witter noted that this marks the first time Arapahoe County — the third-most populous county in the state with nearly 600,000 people and whose municipalities include suburbs of Denver — has purchased water rights from farmers in northern Colorado. Witter said all of the agricultural water rights purchased on behalf of the water authority came from the Poudre and South Platte rivers. The transactions were made between United and individual shareholders of irrigation, ditch and reservoir companies — including 12 companies in Weld County, according to documents obtained by The Tribune…
Front Range municipalities, because of their rapid growth, have been buying agricultural water rights from farmers to secure the future water needs for decades. But because of the ongoing “buy and dry” trend, the 2010 Statewide Water Supply Initiative, compiled by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, estimates that 500,000 to 700,000 acres of irrigated farmland could be dried up by 2050 — a year by which Colorado farmers will also be expected to help feed a state population that will have doubled to about 10 million people, according to some estimates.
More Arapahoe County Water and Wastewater Authority coverage here and here.