Click here to read the report. From email from Western Resource Advocates (Courtney Morrissey):
As advocates for the protection of Wyoming’s rivers and natural heritage, Western Resource Advocates and Trout Unlimited believe it is imperative for water planning to ensure healthy rivers and to minimize the adverse environmental impacts of water supply strategies.
Sustaining Wyoming’s rivers and streams is critical to Wyoming’s economy and exceptional quality of life. The report Filling the Gap: Meeting Future Urban Water Needs in the Platte Basin, Wyoming (Western Resource Advocates and Trout Unlimited, 2013) documents how Wyoming can more than meet the future water needs of the urban subbasins in the Platte Basin while minimizing impacts to the state’s rivers and streams. Specifically, the smart structural projects, conservation, reuse, and agriculture-urban sharing strategies analyzed in the report would produce 25,000 acre-feet of water per year by 2035, which is 19,600 acre-feet (6.4 billion gallons) of water in excess of the urban subbasin’s 2035 demands.
Our integrated portfolio approach more than fills the projected needs of the urban communities of the Platte Basin, Wyo. while protecting the state’s rivers, economy, and quality of life. Importantly, this water portfolio meets future needs more cheaply and without the need for the types of new, large, environmentally -damaging transbasin diversions that have been a hallmark of traditional water supply planning.
More North Platte River Basin coverage here.