In December, Colorado will issue a comprehensive state water plan. The importance of this endeavor cannot be overstated: If done well, it can measurably improve our use of water and help to strengthen our quality of life and economy.
This initiative is unprecedented, daring to go where previous efforts have failed. The draft plan, released late last year, made notable progress in articulating the issues and challenges ahead. What it did not do is set forth a prioritized action plan for Gov. John Hickenlooper and legislature and articulate an overall state water policy.
Without concrete steps, the plan may go the way of earlier water studies: sitting on library shelves gathering dust.
Gov. Hickenlooper is poised to make a difference. His 2013 executive order directing the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) to prepare Colorado’s Water Plan builds on 10 years of discussions among interests in each of Colorado’s eight river basins regarding future water uses, including recreational and environmental uses. These roundtables have included not only water professionals but also farmers and ranchers, urban residents, environmental advocates, manufacturing, high tech, and energy industry representatives, and others. At a statewide level, the Interbasin Compact Committee (IBCC) has engaged in constructive discussions of the issues, which cut across basin boundaries.
Rarely has Colorado witnessed such sustained citizen input on any issue. What has emerged is a vision for each basin of desired water use in the coming decades.
To this work, the CWCB has added extensive background information. What remains, however, is to meld the individual basin plans into a cohesive, concise statewide water policy that will guide Colorado’s water future.
Colorado is more than an amalgam of eight separate river basins. In reality, each basin in dependent upon other basins. This interdependence is more pronounced today than at any point in our history. The final plan must address this fact.
The governor’s executive order was unequivocal: Water policy should reflect what kind of a state we want in the future. How we use and allocate water is a means to help us achieve a quality of life and an economic health that makes Colorado special. Our water values must reflect broader values concerning how we grow and what we will look like in 50 years. The governor, IBCC and roundtables have noted the importance of maintaining a strong agricultural economy in conjunction with robust cities and high-quality recreation. We want resilient manufacturing, energy, and high-tech sectors. We also want an environment that is the envy of others.
So how does our current legal, institutional and policy framework stack up? The draft plan illustrates that we may fall significantly short of desired future goals unless we make some strategic adjustments.
The draft plan details the problem of our agricultural lands being dried up as irrigation water rights are sold for municipal purposes. It notes the dramatic increase in catastrophic wildland fires that adversely impact our watersheds due in part to radically changing patterns of weather and precipitation. It highlights Colorado’s explosive population growth and details the need for conservation and reuse of water in our cities. And it emphasizes the importance of keeping Colorado’s rivers, streams and lakes healthy in the face of water diversions and development.
This background seems to be a call for action — a recognition that the status quo will not get us to our end goals and that the State may be facing serious tradeoffs between competing policy objectives. But the plan does not come to grips with central challenges. For example, irrigated ag lands are drying up because water rights are property rights; yet the draft plan protects the ability of those who own these rights to sell them as they wish. Likewise, there is no acknowledgment that Colorado’s system of local control means that decisions about water conservation are left to individual cities — which may prefer to dry up ag lands rather than achieve higher levels of conservation. While our water rights system and our faith in local solutions should remain a key part of the final plan, we may need to tweak or refine some of our institutions to reach our desired goals.
Here are some of the key revisions that need to be made to the final plan:
Funding of Water Infrastructure: Identifying sources of funding for future multipurpose water projects is critical. The draft plan, while identifying the magnitude of the funding problem, is relatively silent as to the preferred path forward. With the limitations of The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and other budgetary challenges, finding adequate resources to maintain existing (and build new) infrastructure will be no easy trick. Yet without a specific and prioritized funding strategy, we will have a water policy that largely cannot be implemented.
Agriculture: The loss of ag lands is one of the state’s most pressing challenges. The draft plan lists a number of possible strategies to keep farms in operation but it doesn’t propose a specific course of action. Unfortunately there are a number of legal and institutional roadblocks impeding these opportunities.
Urban Water Conservation and Reuse: How can our communities do more with conservation and reuse to slow the transfer of agricultural water rights and reduce the need for transbasin diversions? While a number of Front Range cities are making major strides to conserve, others are not. Should the state play a more decisive role in setting minimum levels of conservation? How will this square with our preference for local control?
Land Use Considerations: Historically, water providers have had little input into the land-use decisions of county commissioners or city councils. Yet land use is often a major driver in how water is used and what it costs. Along the Front Range, more than 30 percent of our water is allocated for lawn watering. But in an era of climate change and explosive population growth, future bluegrass lawns may have a detrimental impact on other water uses. The draft plan doesn’t endorse any new or emerging role for state or local governments.
Agricultural Water Conservation: More than 70 percent of the state’s water goes to irrigating crops and pastures. But technology is available to stretch these water supplies. Even a modest 5 to 10 percent reduction in agricultural irrigation could make a significant difference.
Admittedly, this path is complicated. How does a farmer’s conservation of water affect return flows relied upon by others? What impact will conservation have on the value of the farmer’s water rights? And how does the state engineer administer such changes? The best solutions will come from the agricultural community itself, but the water rights system should be tweaked to encourage these savings. The draft plan stops short of supporting specific actions to create the necessary flexibility and legal protections.
Transbasin Diversions:Since 70 percent of Colorado’s population is on the Eastern Slope and 70 percent of Colorado’s water is on the Western Slope, the Front Range has looked to the Western Slope for decades to meet its water needs. As Gov. John Love used to admonish, “Water runs uphill toward money.” No issue is more controversial than a proposed transbasin diversion.How then have the roundtables and IBCC wrestled with this issue? In my view, reasonably well.
A general framework is emerging to evaluate future proposed transbasin diversions. Without it, the federal government is left to guess (or ignore) what’s the state’s position is. Conversely, a well articulated state position will command the attention of federal agencies.
Water Quality/Water Quantity: With the impacts of climate change combined with increasing consumption of remaining water supplies, the relationship between water quality and water quantity is obvious. To plan for one without careful integration of the other would be sheer folly.
Past federal reviews and permitting of major water projects have often taken five to 10 years, costing millions of dollars and not necessarily improving the environmental quality of projects. Clearly, alternate ways are available to shorten this process, gain better public input, and allow worthy projects to proceed. New initiatives from the Obama administration, in combination with earlier Colorado proposals, can hasten faster and better review. The plan should incorporate these approaches.
The foundation for a forward-looking plan has been laid through the hard work of the basin roundtables, IBCC and CWCB. What the final plan must do is articulate the tradeoffs which we face and set forth a concise action plan of near-, mid-, and long-term steps for consideration by the governor and General Assembly.
This is not an opportunity we can afford to squander.
Harris Sherman is senior counsel at Arnold & Porter. He has twice served as executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and has chaired the Interbasin Compact Committee. Most recently he was under secretary for Natural Resources & the Environment at USDA.
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