Click the link to read the article on The Sterling Journal Advocate website (Jeff Rice). Here’s an excerpt:
February 11, 2025
Three of Colorado’s top water experts hammered home the idea that Colorado’s water situation id precarious, at best, and almost always on the brink of crisis. The day-long Voices of Rural Colorado symposium in Denver was the setting for an hour-long discussion of Colorado water. Attendees heard from, and interacted with, Rebecca Mitchell, former executive director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board and now Colorado’s representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission; Zane Kessler, director of government relations for the Colorado River District; and Jim Yahn, Logan County Commissioner and manager of the North Sterling Irrigation District. One of the points that was repeatedly made during the discussion was that the Colorado River is Colorado’s River. Besides watering most of the Western Slope of Colorado, the river is tapped for more than a half-million acre feet of water to the Front Range and eastern plains. Nearly half of that, about 200,000 acre feet per year, is fed directly into the Big Thompson River at Estes Park, primarily for irrigation in the South Platte River Basin. The remaining 330,000 acre feet is diverted to cities on the Front Range like Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo. That water ends up in the South Platte and Arkansas River basins…
Yahn told the attendees that continued drought in the Colorado River Basin will have an impact on the South Platte Valley, which is why projects like the Chimney Hollow Reservoir, nearing completion next to Carter Lake west of Berthoud, are important…Mitchell said that the crisis on the Colorado is easily seen in the water levels of the two largest reservoirs on the river, Lake Mead on the Nevada-Arizona state line near Las Vegas, and Lake Powell, halfway between Salt Lake City and Phoenix on the Utah-Arizona state line.