Ark _Rndtble_minutes_5_10_06

• Basin Roundtable: Arkansas
• Title: Minutes
• Date: 5/10/2006
• Basin Roundtables - Doc Type: Minutes

Arkansas Basin Roundtable
Meeting of May 10 , 2006

Meeting Notes

The meeting notes attempt to follow the agenda.

1. Chairman Hamel convened the meeting at 12:30. The minutes of the meeting of April 12 ,
2006 were approved as submitted . 29 voting membe rs of the 5 4 seated members of the
Roundtable were present . . The Chairman noted that there were many excused absences due to a
simultaneous meeting in Lake County regarding the Southeast Colorado Water Conservancy
District’s Preferred Storage Option Plan.

2. The Chairman reported on activities related to the Interbasin Compact Committee (IBCC).
House Bill 1400 , carrying the IBCC Charter for approval by the General Assembly , was approved
for signature by the Governor late in the session . Likewise, Senat e Bill 179 was approved by the
legislature providing funding for basin roundtables. More information should become available
after signature by the Governor. Mr. Eric Hecox was attending the Metro Roundtable, scheduled
for the same date as the Arkansas R oundtable, but the hope is that he will provide detailed
information at the next meeting concerning implementation of these statutes.

3. Mr. Mark Pifher and Ms. SeEtta Moss provided an update from the SWSI II Environmental
and Recreational Technical Roun dtable. Mr. Pifher reviewed the work of the group to date and
an outline of the written summary to be provided to the roundtables. Ms. Moss p resented
information extracted from the Spring, 2006 edition of Headwaters Magazine documenting that
wildlife vie wing, primarily birding, was a great er economic generator of both revenues and jobs in
the State of Colorado than fishing.

4. Dr. James Pri t chett of Colorado State University, and a native of McClave, Colorado
presented a
PowerPoint slide show entitled “Regional Economic Contribution of Irrigated Agriculture . ”
Following a question and answer period, the same f ive (5) small groups from the April meeting convened for
discussion. Members of the public and roundtable members who missed the April meeting wer e encouraged
to join one of the groups. Mr. Jeff Tranel of the CSU Extension framed the discussion around three (3)
questions: 1) What did you learn?; 2) What do you challenge?, and; 3) What additional information would
you like to receive? The groups re ported out:

Group 1 : Values and Needs are important: a) high personal value on agriculture, desire for urban and
domestic efficiency, don’t waste water - use it wisely, environmental and recreational uses are important,
quality of life is tied to water sup ply. Learned that 31% of the Arkansas Basin economy is base d on
agricultural. Would like more discussion on the rotating fallowing approach as a tool - will it work?
Group 2 : Learned about the challenges to an agricultural economy. Why is water moving? Water
efficiency in agriculture may not equal more water under the Kansas v. Colorado lawsuit. Would like more
information about types of mitigation. Dr Pritchett mentioned medical visits to rural areas as a possible form
of mitigation for water transf ers, would like to know more about that.
Group 3 : The setup remains noisy, hard to hear the presentation. How can we improve the venue for
our meetings? Learned that we must replace the fundamental economics of agriculture with something else if