From The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Dennis Webb):
Coloradans have spent years in discussion and in many cases debate about what should be in the state’s first-ever water plan.
And they’ll have years to wrangle over how to implement it.
But on Thursday, for a day anyway, residents on both sides of the Continental Divide took a break to simply celebrate the completion of the historic document.
“I think this is a moment that we should relish, savor,” Gov. John Hickenlooper said at a press conference.
The Colorado Water Conservation Board unanimously approved the plan, and immediately presented it to Hickenlooper, who had ordered its creation.
He declared, “We now have a plan with measurable objectives, concrete goals and detailed critical actions, all driven by our statewide water values, our system of how we think about water.”
James Eklund, director of the CWCB, said in an interview, “It’s a big deal because it demonstrates a new paradigm, a new way forward and certainly a heck of a lot of work.”
The plan looks at potential gaps between supply and demand in future decades and addresses conservation, reuse, storage and other means of filling those gaps. A key, and controversial, component of the plan provides a framework for discussing possible further diversions of more Western Slope water to the Front Range.
Those involved in the plan say it is the product of the largest act of civic engagement in the state. Roundtable groups from individual river basins held numerous meetings on the plan, which also elicited more than 30,000 comments submitted by the public.
Carlyle Currier, a Mesa County rancher who sits on the Interbasin Compact Committee, which addresses state water issues, said the plan’s completion is “certainly” historic.
He said it represents “a lot of years of work coming to, I shouldn’t say coming to fruition, because I think as someone would say it’s the end of the beginning, not the end. The work really starts now.”
Hickenlooper also spoke at length about the work ahead, including the need for “the Legislature’s help to make sure we have the right funding in the right places.”
The plan sets goals including 400,000 acre feet of water saved by urban conservation, and 400,000 acre feet of new storage, by 2050. It also calls for identifying 50,000 acre feet of agricultural water for voluntary alternative transfers that don’t permanently dry up farmland, and for having management plans cover 80 percent of locally prioritized streams and watersheds by 2030.
Jim Pokrandt, who works for the Colorado River District and chairs the Colorado Basin Roundtable, notes that the plan doesn’t back any specific project. Rather, it creates a plan for addressing a future with millions of more Coloradans in it, and with climate change expected to result in increasing drought.
The first low-hanging fruit from the Colorado River Basin’s perspective is urban conservation, which mostly means conservation on the Front Range, where most Coloradans live, he said.
“The Western Slope’s going to have to participate, but the big numbers (in terms of population and potential for conservation savings) are on the Front Range, no doubt about it,” he said.
One of the points of contention in recent months during the plan’s finalization has regarded whether the Front Range should cut back more on its watering of lawns and parks, and what that might do to quality of life.
Jim Lochhead, chief executive officer of Denver Water, said at Thursday’s press conference that his utility has reduced water use 20 percent over the last decade despite 10 percent growth in population in its service area.
“We can go a lot lower without sacrificing quality of life. We can still have landscaping, we can still have trees through efficiency and use.”
The prospect of further transmountain diversions also has dominated discussion this year, with Front Range water agencies saying more diversions must remain a possibility and many on the Western Slope saying the Colorado River has no more water to give.
The plan’s framework for transmountain diversion discussions says in part that any new diversions would occur only in wet years, environmental and recreational needs would be addressed in conjunction with any new diversion, and future Western Slope needs would be accommodated.
Hickenlooper said the state’s water rights law must be respected, but by addressing things like conservation and storage, the goal is to create a system where diversions are the last possible approach.
“Our goal from the very beginning was to try and make sure that where the water is the water stays, but within the realm of the legal system that we operate in,” he said.
Currier said he thinks no one is entirely happy with the plan, but it represents a lot of collaborative thinking and compromise.
“I think it provides a very good base from which to build on from here,” he said.
He believes the roundtable and Interbasin Compact Committee processes that date back a decade, to when Russell George pushed for their creation while director of the state Department of Natural Resources, have been important in that they forced people to talk and recognize the importance of various stakeholders. These range from agricultural, to municipal and industrial, to recreational and environmental interests.
“There are things that must be protected and we need to work in a way that we can to meet the future needs of a wide variety of stakeholders in the future,” said Currier, who believes the process has led to an increased appreciation of agriculture’s role in the state.
Eklund believes that through the roundtable process, “people have learned how to listen to each other in a greater capacity that I think no one thought possible.”
Eklund straddles both sides of the Continental Divide because of his job in Denver and his family roots in Collbran. He believes a lot has been learned in the planning process about the economic and other connections between the Western Slope and the Front Range. A lot was said during the water plan process about the importance of the Western Slope’s tourism and recreation economy to the state, and that economy’s reliance on water that fills rivers and irrigates scenic valleys.
“It’s really the Western Slope that’s a big, big part of our brand as a state,” Eklund said.
