²ÊÃñ±¦µä

Figueroa, Jorge ¹

¹ Western Resource Advocates

The Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) and Interbasin Compact Committee (IBCC), local communities, and citizens? roundtables at the river basin level have been engaged foro more than 5 years in a water supply planning process known as the Statewide Water Supply Initiative (SWSI). The SWSI effort, which has been folded in the current Colorado Water Plan process,is intended to answer the important questions of how much water Colorado will need in the future and how these needs can be met. The most recent SWSI report ? titled Colorado?s Water Supply Future, Statewide Water Supply Initiative 2010 (?SWSI 2010?) ? forecasts that within the next 40 years, the Front Range of Colorado will need to fill an annual water supply gap of 428,000 acre-feet (139 billion gallons) in order to meet its projected future urban water demands. Faced with this projected need, the CWCB and IBCC, together with Basin Roundtables, are devising plans for meeting the 2050 demands for the Front Range of Colorado. Four strategies are being considered ?Identified Projects and Processes (IPPs), increased water conservation, transfer of irrigation water from the agricultural sector to municipalities, and large-scale diversions of water from Colorado?s Western Slope to the Front Range. Scenarios for meeting new needs are being developed based on implementation of varying levels of each of the four strategies. Although dams and pipelines and other structural projects will still be valuable in the 21st century ? and we have expressed acceptance of some of these projects ? too much attention in this planning effort falls on these traditional tools that are often expensive and environmentally damaging. Our Filling the Gap reports (Filling the Gap: Commonsense Solutions for Meeting Front Range Water Needs (2011); and Filling the Gap: Meeting Future Urban Water Needs in the Arkansas Basin(2012)), demonstrate that by developing select structural water projects, implementing increased water conservation and water reuse projects, and integrating agricultural and municipal water supply systems to allow for increased sharing arrangements, the urban counties of the Front Range of Colorado can more than meet their 2050 water needs at a reasonable cost without environmentally damaging water supply developments.

Western Resource Advocates, Trout Unlimited, Colorado Environmental Coalition. 2011. Filling the Gap: Commonsense Solutions for Meeting Front Range Water Needs. Boulder, CO.

Western Resource Advocates, Trout Unlimited, Colorado Environmental Coalition. 2012. Filling the Gap: Meeting Future Urban Water Needs in the Arkansas Basin. Boulder, CO.