Water as Ecosystem Base Handout - Melinda Kass

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? 30 year leases of water from Montana agricultural water users to Trout Un limited, the Montana Water Trust and Montana state agencies for instream flow restoration; ? Releases from storage, such as was pioneered right here in the Upper Gunnison Basin using the second fill from Taylor Park Reservoir; ? Bypass flow requirements to pre serve endangered fishes as required in Forest Service special use permits along the Okanagon in Washington State ; and ? Releases from Ruedi and Green Mountain Reservoirs to deliver water to endangered fishes in the 15 mile reach on the Colorado River . In ad dition, as the region contemplates increased demands on water, it will also be important to rethink how much water is “necessary” to maintain existing water uses. Most members of the conservation community believe that it is possible to free up relatively large quantities of water for other uses from conservation, starting with municipal water use, which happens to represent the fastest growing new need for water in the region. For example, looking only at Colorado’s Front Range communities, Facing Our Fu ture suggested that the following water could be freed up exclusively by municipal water conservation programs. The savings are consistent with the goals Mayor Hickenlooper recently set for Denver in his State of the City speech earlier this month. The f irst column in the chart below includes the 2004 Statewide Water Supply Initiative projected gap for comparison purposes. All numbers are in acre - feet per year. SWSI Gap Indoor Use Outdoor Use South Platte Basin 133,000 – 226,000 48,131 – 106,314 19,96 9 – 112,323 Arkansas Basin 23,000 – 72,000 10,920 – 23,910 4,711 – 26,501 For agricultural water use, which still uses a large majority of the region’s water, there are also major technological advances that could result in significant water savings, so me of which could be used to restore sustainable stream flows. However, there technologies are often beyond the financial capacity of agricultural water users. Farm Bill programs have created some incentives for producers to install such technologies. I n addition, some states have made it possible for non - governmental organizations like Trout Unlimited to pay for such efficiencies in exchange for being able to put the water in stream on a temporary (30 year) basis. 4. What elements of a water policy ap propriate to this region are necessary to protect water’s ecological value? ? Watershed - based management (as first suggested by John Wesley Powell); ? Water markets open for transactions that change diversionary uses to ecosystem protection in the same way as such markets currently allow changes from one diversionary use to another; ? Implementation of “smart” water development principles, such as Facing Our Future espouses [NOTE: see attached Appendix] ; ? Implementation of CPR principles both to new and changed water facilities;