Water issues begin to boil over from pressure of new population growth

Supply gap leaves more questions than answers

There’s an old saying about water rights: water is for fightin’ and whiskey is for drinkin’. With the Statewide Water Supply Initiative’s (SWSI) recent projection that Colorado’s population will nearly double by 2050, reaching between 8.6 million and 10.5 million people, there could be a lot more to fight about and lot less water for whiskey.

According to the Interbasin Compact Committee (IBCC), population growth coupled with agricultural demand and potential oil shale production could force Colorado to face a water supply gap of between 200,000 and 600,000 acre-feet. That’s as many as 456,000 football fields covered in one foot of water—water that Colorado would need, but wouldn’t have on hand.
But the IBCC, created by the 2005 Water for the 21st Century Act, is determined to change the nature of the fight, turning disagreement into cooperative discussion. In a December report to then-Governor Ritter and Governor-elect Hickenlooper, the IBCC outlined a four-part approach to creating a statewide framework for solving Colorado’s water gap.
On February 28, the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District Board (UGRWCD) presented the report to the public on behalf of the Gunnison Basin Round Table. Representatives took that public input to the IBCC at the Statewide Roundtable Summit in Westminster, Colo. on Thursday, March 3. It marked the beginning of a long process, one that goes beyond individual basins to look at the health and vitality of Colorado as a whole.

Not a consensus document
The IBCC’s recommendations are simple in concept: complete already identified projects and processes (IPPs), find new water supplies, rethink agricultural water transfers—the old “buy and dry” philosophy that removes agricultural lands from irrigation—and implement greater water conservation. But there is nothing simple in the recommendations’ implementation. As the IBCC report outlines, each approach must be enacted simultaneously, and even then success isn’t guaranteed.
UGRWCD general counsel John McClow explained that calculating the impacts of IPPs is a complex process.
“The methodology for calculating these numbers is to begin with county demand, supply and IPPs,” McClow said. “It then expands to the basin [level], then to statewide, so the math is difficult to follow because of rounding and because the projected success rates for IPPs differ among the basins. In addition, the success rate varies in terms of its impact.”
For example, 100 percent successful implementation of Gunnison Basin IPPs would have far less impact than in the Metro Basin. The increase in demand for the Gunnison Basin is projected to be 16,000 to 23,000 acre-feet per year (AFY), while Metro Basin new demand is projected to be 180,000 to 280,000 AFY.
New water supply projects under consideration—agricultural transfers from the Arkansas and South Platte Basins, pipelines out of Blue Mesa Reservoir and the Flaming Gorge in Wyoming, and pumpbacks in Yampa and Green Mountain water basins—are equally complex and would need to be fully vetted.
“These are strategies being explored by the technical staff at the Colorado Water Conservation Board. They have performed a cost analysis and a feasibility analysis at the reconnaissance level [only],” McClow said.
And trans-mountain water diversion won’t be enough to close the water gap. According to the ICPP report to the governors, agriculture is the third-largest component of Colorado’s economy, but the state could see a significant loss of agricultural land to urbanization. Rancher and board member Ken Spann explained:
“If we want to have a sustained agricultural economy underpinning our state and all the other values that brings (wildlife, open space, real dollars…) we need to think about not having dry-up of agriculture be the default position in how we go about meeting water needs.
“There isn’t consensus on how to do this,” Spann continued. “Is it longer-term lease bases for agricultural dry-up? Is it done on an interruptible supply basis? Is it crop rationing, [watering crops] every fourth day or two days out of four? We don’t know.”
Spann reminded the public that part of the IBC strategy is the development of a vision for Colorado—what we want the state to look like 40 years from now. The report is that discussion, and not the final answer.
“This document is not a consensus document,” Spann said. “It’s a document to begin serious discussion in Colorado about what we should do as citizens and what are our opportunities.”

Local control of a statewide issue
Part of the challenge in addressing water issues comes from the need to meet statewide demand when water rights are managed locally. Trans-mountain diversion of water is sensitive enough, but add to that the component of conservation and it gets even trickier.
“When you have a drought, everyone is willing to get on board to get through the rough spot,” said UGRWCD board secretary George Sibley, “but when we are asking people to start conserving in order to enable more water to be freed up to feed more people moving into state, there’s a little less willingness to do that.”
But for Sibley, the issue at hand shouldn’t be conservation—it should be demand reduction, and it should include support from the state.
“Conservation is where you need people to use less of something,” says Sibley. “Demand reduction is something else, and you won’t find it mentioned much at all in this document. Demand reduction is when you say we aren’t going to let people form bad habits that need to be conserved. We will… develop good habits with the water that’s available, from the start.”
The IBCC report does assert that the state should address how to support local governments in encouraging water conservation. But according to Sibley, the language of “should” isn’t strong enough.
“We have 40 years before we are confronting this, 10 or 15 years where we could do a lot of education at the level of land use planning and for the institutions training the next generation of land use planners. We have to come to the place where we can say ‘shall.’”
It’s a new concept for those accustomed to protecting water rights. UGRWCD board member Bill Nesbitt admitted that he came from the “not a drop” mentality when it came to sharing water. But after participating in the statewide process, he’s learned what “our water” really means: “It’s our water: The State’s Water. The people’s water.”

Statewide discussion
“Exploring alternatives and options on a statewide basis is not negotiating or giving away water,” McClow reminded the UGRWCD board. “It’s an analysis of options.”
That analysis continues at the Statewide Roundtable Summit, where the plan was to ask colleagues from the each roundtable to sit at different tables to encourage cross-basin discussion. In addition to addressing what the IBCC calls the “four legs of the stool,” roundtables were also asked to share what they call the cushion: the environmental considerations of water management. Here, according to UGRWCD board member Steve Glazer, the Gunnison Basin is ahead of the game.
Thanks to a conservation needs assessment, considering environmental priorities like stream flow protection, riparian habitat and recreational use, the roundtable has identified 21 stream segments critical to the vitality of the region.
“By understanding the impacts [of water management on] these attributes, we can avoid or mitigate those impacts,” Glazer said.
In the meantime, there is no pretense that future conversations will be easy. There is often open disagreement among IBCC committee members, according to rancher and IBCC committee member Bill Trampe.
“Believe me, we talked about the definition of sustainability for a full year,” Trampe said.
And omissions from the report, such as the consideration of the Mississippi River as a potential water source—owned by the United States and free from prior appropriations—is a sore topic for members like UGRWCD treasurer Gary Hausler.
Still, there’s a bright side, as UGRWCD general manager Frank Kugel sees it: “Even if no water supply projects come out of the IBCC process, it will still have been a success.” It’s gotten the Front Range to listen to the Western Slope, and vice versa, creating a mutual understanding of needs.
In other words, it’s moved the conversation out of smoky, secret back rooms—away from the fightin’ and the drinkin’.