“My priorities are, obviously, water storage, agriculture, and education,” Sonnenberg said during a lengthy interview Monday with the Journal-Advocate.
On water, Sonnenberg already has declared that any bill coming across his committee’s desk that doesn’t include storage will be DOA.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for conserving water, but we have to have someplace to store all of that water we’re conserving,” he said. “But for some reason, water storage has become a partisan issue. People seem to think that conservatives, ag, Republicans — are all against conservation and we’re not. Agriculture has led the charge on water conservation.”
He recounted the evolution of irrigation from flood to center pivot to drop-head sprinklers to drip irrigation.
Barker Meadows Dam Construction
“But water storage has to be a major part of every conversation we have about water,” he said.
Although he’s one of the few actual agricultural producers in the Legislature, Sonnenberg won’t spend much time advancing bills about growing food and fiber in Colorado. What he will do, however, is advocate for ways to make farming more profitable. After all, farm profitability is critical, Sonnenberg said, if America is going to entice young people to take over the responsibility of feeding the world. The senator said that, at 58, he’s still considered a “young farmer,” and that something needs to be done to lower the median age of farmers in the United States. That median age now is 59.
“But kids can’t come back to the farm if they can’t survive,” he said, and then proceeded to tick off the capital investments needed in equipment, land, and infrastructure. It was a bleak picture.
“What I can do is be an advocate,” he said. “My role as chair (of the Ag Committee) and as (President) Pro Tem (of the Senate) is to be an advocate to my federal partners. I have a good relationship with those people.”
[…]
Sonnenberg has some ideas about what his “federal partners” can do to help make farming more profitable, especially for younger farmers.
“What the government can do, without just outright giveaways, is help farmers manage the risk. They can do that by contributing a percentage of the premiums for crop insurance,” he said. “My biggest fear every year is hail, but hail insurance costs me $18 to $20 an acre,” he said. “You put that on top of all the other inputs — seed, fertilizer, fuel, pesticides — it’s just not profitable at anything less than $4 or $5 a bushel for wheat.”
[…]
The first-term senator also will be keeping an eye on the conservation easement debacle, which he said he thinks will cost the state more than it will ever recover from tax credits that have been retroactively disallowed. He knows Rep. Becker will again introduce a bill aimed at giving landowners relief while they haggle with the state over paying back those tax credits, and is ready to do what he can to promote it in the Senate.
He also intends to advocate on behalf of rural communities having to rebuild their sewer and water systems because of higher standards being imposed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
“What they’re doing to those small communities is a travesty,” he said. “You have a town with only, maybe, 100 (water) taps and they’re being held to a water quality standard that can’t be met economically. Is it cost effective to make sure every community has distilled water to drink? I don’t think so.”
FromThe Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Charles Ashby):
Southwest Colorado got two new lawmakers over the weekend — one new lawmaker and a familiar one.
That happened when the central committee for Senate District 6 chose Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, to replace Sen. Ellen Roberts of Durango, who resigned her seat at the end of last year.
In his place, the central committee for his seat in House District 58 chose Marc Catlin to replace him.
Catlin, a graduate of Mesa State College, is the water rights development coordinator for Montrose County who also sits on the board of the Colorado River Water Conservation District.
Catlin also is a former manager of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association, and hosts a weekly talk show on 580 AM radio, where he mainly focuses on water issues on the Western Slope.
Coram, who was first elected to the Colorado Legislature in 2011, was just re-elected to a third term in the Colorado House in November.
He’s already been assigned to the Senate agriculture and judiciary committees.
Both men will be sworn into office alongside their colleagues when the 2017 session of the Legislature convenes on Wednesday.
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