Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Daily News website (Austin Corona). Here’s an excerpt:
As competition grows for Colorado’s limited water resources, Front Range cities are disproportionately vulnerable to interstate water cuts on the beleaguered Colorado River, according to a recently updated study. The study found that 96% of Front Range water use from the Colorado River is subject to possible cuts under an interstate agreement. Updated this year by Hydros Consulting, the study was conducted on behalf of the Colorado River Water Conservation District. It is part of a seven-year effort to analyze the potential impacts of water cuts under the Colorado River Compact in Colorado…
While the vast majority of Front Range water use is theoretically subject to compact curtailment, only 30% of Western Slope water use — consumptive use, not diversions — shares the same vulnerability. In addition, the Front Range accounts for 48% of the state’s curtailable Colorado River water use, despite only making up 23% of the state’s overall use of the river. The majority of Front Range water rights on the Colorado River are vulnerable to curtailment because they are newer than the Colorado River Compact, which was signed in 1922. In Colorado water law, water rights receive priority during shortages according to their age, meaning the compact trumps any water rights newer than it…
The study found that under current hydrologic trends and reservoir operations, Colorado’s growing water demand is not likely to trigger this situation. [ed. emphasis mine] A sustained period of severe drought, however, could make it happen. In the last 20 years, the Colorado River’s average flow dropped to 11 million acre-feet for a period of seven years (the longer-term norm has been 13 million). Study facilitators say that if that seven-year stretch were to become the new normal, river flows would drop below the lower basin’s entitlement, even if Colorado’s water demand stays flat. If Colorado’s water demand follows future growth projections, it would likely speed up that process, potentially decreasing annual flows by an additional half-million acre-feet. Even without a natural drop in river flows, rising Colorado water demand could cause other interstate issues on the river outside of the Colorado River Compact. Under Colorado water demand projections for 2050, created by the Upper Colorado River Commission, the upper basin could fail to meet its obligation of sending an additional .75 million acre-feet downstream to Mexico.
