2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended

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2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended Page 31 of 49 Madam Chair: Mr. Wilkinson: is to emphasize that if these concepts are going to go anywhere and that they're going to be valid in the state, they need to have the buy-in of those on the ground who own the water rights and who are using the water rights. It's very, very important. It's an important concept to discuss. We want to make sure we have the right representation there to have that discussion so that we can move forward with these issues. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Foutz. Any questions or comments for this witness? Thank you very much. Eric Wilkinson, are you still here? Would you join us? Madam Chair and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you today. I'm Eric Wilkinson. I'm the general manager of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, as well as the municipal sub-district. The district as you know operates and maintains the Colorado Big Thompson project and our sub-district owns, operates and maintains the Windy Gap project. Our board looked at this and wants to wholeheartedly suppOli this bill in concept. In our opinion it's a very laudable concept and it's worthy of pursuit and must be pursued. At the same time, it's a complex concept that presents challenges to codify it into law. Those challenges we feel must be fully addressed as we move forward with this process. We have provided input to Executive Director Russell, as well I think by copy to the bill's sponsor. We formed that input in the way of questions and what we think should be the answers to those questions. Hopefully those have been helpful to them. The dialogue that this has already spurred I believe has been extremely useful. The continuing pursuit of this type of legislation I think very much merits that pursuit. I won't go into the opportunities that I think that this type of legislation presents. That has been done before and the day is late. So I'll cut to the chase on that. I think something that Executive Director Russell said merits repetition here. What this invokes is the need for people to come to the table with what you need and what you're willing to bring to the table. www.escriptionist.com Page 31 of 49