2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended

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2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended Page 2 of 49 water wars that have come to define the water dialogue in this General Assembly and beyond. Lastly I'd like to thank you, Madam Chair, for your constmctive and insightful feedback on the contents of the bill and I look forward to working with you and the members of the committee on this important effoli. I think to understand the need for this legislation you first have to acknowledge the state of the water debate in Colorado in the last several years. That state is one defined best, at least in my mind, by stalemate. While some important and potentially significant conversations are incurring in many instances, little measurable progress has been made in recent years in this state in more fully achieving the beneficial use in application of all our water entitlements. In the throws of a 500-year drought, Colorado has spent far too much time quarreling with itself and not nearly enough time solving problems. Without delving into the nature of that, we're all familiar with the reason why, but ultimately the state of Colorado is who suffers when we're not able to reach broader agreement on how to use our state waters. In terms of transferring sort of from the background and the context of this bill, this bill sets out to do a very simple and straight forward proposition, if there is such a thing in water circles and that's to facilitate a creative framework that would encourage basins, water interests and stakeholders to work together, to come together and seek compromise on this important issue to us all. That's exactly what HB 1177 would do. It would lead our state's water dialogue sort of out of the abstract to more academic arguments that are defined our debate under this dome and into the realm of real world problem solving from the bottom up at the local level. Let me briefly explain how it would work. The bill creates basin roundtables in the state's seven river basins and two demographically unique sub-basins. The legislation uses the roundtables forum to the statewide water supply initiative as the starting point for those basin roundtables, but ultimately each roundtable will be able to decide for itself what its membership guidelines will look like. The nine roundtables will analyze water management issues and needs within their area and reach out to the various stakeholders with a stake in the use of our waters. www.escriptionist.com Page 2 of 49