Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Springs Gazette website (Marianne Goodland). Here’s an excerpt:
Several of Colorado’s water experts on [August 18, 2022] noted that the federal government’s plan for tackling dwindling Colorado River reservoirs is “light” on the next steps but that the river’s condition also offers opportunities to boost resiliency among Western states.
“It’s a dismaying time, but one full of opportunity,” said attorney James Eklund of Sherman & Howard, formerly the director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board and Colorado’s representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission. The federal government relied on the states to come up with a plan, a strategy that didn’t work, he said, but he quickly added that the Inflation Reduction Act signed earlier this week by President Joe Biden includes $4 billion to combat drought in the West.
Eklund took part in a panel on “The Future of Colorado Water: Scarcity and Opportunity” hosted by Colorado Politics and The Denver Gazette. The other panelists were Troy Eid, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig and one of the West’s leading expert on tribal laws, including water; Jennifer Gimbel, a Terry J. Stevinson Fellow with the Common Sense Institute and formerly principal deputy assistant secretary for water and science at the Department of the Interior; Jennifer Pitt, director of the Colorado River Program at the National Audubon Society; and, Don Brown, former commissioner of agriculture for Colorado.