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<br />conservation represents one of those sources. As urban growth continues, the demand for <br />more water will likely result in additional changes of water rights from agricultural to <br />domestic use. Adopting prudent water efficient landscaping, improving irrigation system <br />efficiencies, and implementing rainwater conservation practices may reduce the need for <br />such changes; this would reduce the ongoing process of drying up productive agricultural <br />lands. <br /> <br />Proposed Study <br /> <br />Under current Colorado law, a property owner does not own the precipitation falling from <br />the sky onto his or her rooftop or driveway. Ownership of the water resource remains in <br />the public domain and utilizing that water for a beneficial use requires obtaining a water <br />right. Water rights are obtained under the doctrine of Prior Appropriation or "first in <br />time, first in right" and the quantities allotted to earlier, more senior rights must be <br />protected. Intercepting rainwater that would have otherwise migrated to groundwater or <br />surface water might interfere with the full allocation of those senior water rights. <br /> <br />Colorado's doctrine of prior appropriation and current policies means that precipitation <br />cannot be diverted, stored, or put to beneficial use (with landscape irrigation for example) <br />without an augmentation plan to replace the depletions associated with the diversion. <br />Therein lays the crux of the proposed study - to demonstrate the feasibility and <br />sustainability of rainwater conservation without injuring existing water rights within the <br />framework of existing Colorado law. <br /> <br />Rainwater collection and use could be practiced in Colorado by: <br /> <br />. Accurately determining the consumptive use of rainfall by evaporation and native <br />vegetation and thus quantifying the return flow to streams and aquifers from <br />rainfall; <br />. Calculating an algorithm to define the net depletion/accretion to the river under a <br />rainwater conservation scenario; and <br />. Identifying the entity responsible for providing any shortfalls to the river via an <br />approved augmentation plan. <br /> <br />This approach ensures that collecting and usmg rainwater for immediate and local <br />irrigation purposes does not harm any existing water rights. The process also uses a <br />familiar and well-understood mechanism in the form of an approved augmentation plan. <br />The water balance algorithm will produce practical and defensible estimates of <br />consumptive use and return flows, and allow development of an augmentation plan. <br />Finally, this course acknowledges that there are other stakeholders in the water rights <br />arena. <br /> <br />Sound public policy must be supported by sound science. In this case, sound science <br />means defining the influence of rainwater conservation on evapotranspiration, water <br />transport, and water storage, and thus the ability to quantify the impacts of this practice. <br /> <br />4 <br />