2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended

• Title: 2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended
• IBCC - Doc Type: Legislation

2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended

Page 30 of 49

Now, having said that, Colorado Farm Bureau has one major
concern and that's with the representation that's given on the
roundtables and at the local level.

I think as Director George talked about the SWSI report and the
fact that that's out there and we should be looking at that and
making use of that in these discussions, I think it's important to
note that one of the observations of that repOli right now is that in
the next 20-25 years that agriculture is the sector of our society that
is going to have the largest impact in terms of a negative impact in
terms of water in this state. I think it was something on the order
of 500,000 acres if! remember the correct numbers in that report.
But it was a huge impact on that particular sector in this state.

As such we feel that it's very important that if we're going to have
a buy-in in this state to these kinds of concepts that we're
discussing right now that there needs to be adequate representation
of that sector on these roundtables or these committees or these
local groups. The bill as it's currently written I don't think gives
us that assurance in this industry that that representation is going to
be there. So we're very concerned about that.

If, in fact, agriculture does own 86 percent of the rights to use the
water in this state, then there ought to be some level of
representation that would be indicative of that level of ownership
so that at least at those initial stages, in the very beginning of the
discussions, we begin to have some buy-in from that particular
group about what's happening. We've seen what happens when
that doesn't take place the last 20 or 30 years. Very few of the
discussion on water bills that have happened in the last 20-30 years
have not necessarily included that group; those water owners at the
initial stages. Because of that there's never been a buy-in at that
level. If there is no buy-in then probably this concept is not going
to go anywhere either.

So I think it's extremely important that somehow we make sure
that that takes place. Colorado Farm Bureau has language in our
policy book. I'll just throw it out here. Its been there for many,
many years. It's not anything new, but our language and our
policy books and our members say that members of study groups
should be appointed from various groups in direct portion to the
volume of water that they use.

Now there may be some discussion one way or the other on how
various people react to that, but again I think I want to - my point

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