Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Daily News website (Austin Corona). Here’s an excerpt:
The Colorado Water Congress annual summer conference in Steamboat Springs this week saw its largest-ever attendance. Speakers said the event’s size reflects a growing public attention to water as climate change and population growth put pressure on the state’s water resources…Speakers said they are seeing more public attention to water than they ever have in the past. Historian of the American West Patty Limerick, who delivered the first speaking event of the conference, said that when she first moved to Colorado in 1984, she saw a great deal of “complacency and taken-for-grantedness” in Coloradans regarding water. Now, she said, there is much more awareness of the issue…
[U.S. Senator] Hickenlooper noted that he convened a new Colorado River Caucus in the Senate this year, which includes senators from all seven states in the basin. [U.S. Representative] Neguse, whose district covers Boulder and much of north-central Colorado, has followed suit by convening a similar caucus in the House of Representatives…
Colorado State Climatologist Russ Schumacher affirmed that Colorado’s water supplies face a troubling future as he shared findings that Colorado State University is expecting to include in their 2023 Colorado Climate Change Report, which they plan to release in October. While precipitation doesn’t show a clear upward or downward trend, Schumacher said temperatures are trending upward. That means that soils will dry out, hotter air will cause more evaporation and rivers will run lower earlier in the summer.