4-14 Senate Committee

• Title: 4-14 Senate Committee
• IBCC - Doc Type: Legislation

4-14 Senate Committee
Interviewer, Interviewee

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come together and try to mutually agree to projects that are
beneficial and we've done that interbasin and intrabasin. Two
years ago we created the Statewide Water Supply Initiative and I
think that was a good step. It's been a good process. We've
identified needs within the basins. We've looked at supplies
within the basins. We've looked at potential waste redressals on
that need. We've looked at potential projects. We've looked at
consumptive and non-consumptive uses and I think, I think that's
been good. And it's leading us now, really, to what the next step
should be.

SWSI, itself, will continue and will continue to try to address those
needs. But we need to move into a different, almost, a different
mind set to where, now, that we've identified those needs and those
supplies and some of the projects; we have to start figuring out
how we're going to address those. And to do that, it's helpful to
bring people to the table. In some basins, most of the discussion
will be about issues within that basin. In other basins, they will
have to talk about bringing water in or the potential expOlis of
water because some basins; their solution isn't bringing water in. I
know the basins are, of course, concerned about water moving out,
which will inevitably happen. So, we'll have different concern
with different basins, which has been part of the, I think, problem
with creating this process; because we have different needs within
different basins.

But we are moving into that stage now, where we are going to have
to look at how water moves and how projects get built and this will
help address that. I think, really, at this point it would probably be
helpful if we let Speaker George come up and kind of share his
vision of what this can accomplish and then, from there, we'll
move into a detailed explanation of the bill. And a fairly lengthy
proposed amendment, which we'll walk through in the pre-
amended version that we passed out.

Chairman: Are there any questions for the sponsor? Okay, then, we'll move
to the public testimony component of the hearing. Russell George,
Mr. Speaker, welcome to the Senate Ag., Natural Resources and
Energy Committee. Good to see you again. Please identify
yourself for the record and proceed.

RlIssell George: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Russell George, Executive Director of
the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. Let me spend just
a few minutes talking about how, how we got here; both
philosophically and then more specifically to the bill itself. And,
also, we'll have other folks follow us who can get into the details.

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