GLENWOOD SPRINGS — The members of the Colorado River Basin Roundtable last week unanimously agreed to tell a group of Front Range water interests not to look for new sources of water on the Western Slope to meet a forecasted water shortage.
“We’re trying to tell you, Front Range: Don’t count on us,” said Lurline Curran, county manager of Grand County. “Don’t be counting on us to make up all the shortages.”
The paper crafted by the Colorado roundtable states its case in a more diplomatic fashion, but it is still blunt.
“The notion that increasing demands on the Front Range can always be met with a new supply from the Colorado River, or any other river, (is) no longer valid,” the position paper states.
The Colorado roundtable is one of nine roundtables established by the state Legislature eight years ago. It holds monthly meetings in Glenwood Springs and has 37 members representing various interests, including agriculture, water utilities, environmental concerns, recreational users, and federal and state agencies.
And the roundtable members in attendance last Monday voted to send their white paper to the Interbasin Compact Committee, which serves as a state-level coordinating committee for the roundtables and is also studying how to best to meet a projected “supply gap” of 500,000 acre-feet in 2010.
The Committee is looking for more water from four areas: conservation, new water projects already in the planning and review stage, water transferred from irrigation to municipal use and new large water storage and delivery projects, or “new supply.”
To date, the Committee has not articulated its own vision for “new supply” and the roundtables are seeking to influence the committee’s analysis and findings.
