2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended

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2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended Page 35 of 49 So, both of those things I think are, to the extent that they're goals of this bill, are things that we're appreciative of. That said, I think like virtually everybody else whose spoken, I have some concerns about the specifics in the bill. I think there are a number of things from representation to funding that are issues where everybody who's interested in this has a different idea about how it should happen. It's something that either outside of the committee room or that you all are going to have to wrestle with because there will be various, if people don't have adequate representation, they're going to be uncomfortable with the process. The other issue - and I would like to echo many of John McClow's concerns how this integrates with 1041 and some of the other processes that are out there I think all of what he said was valid. Both Director George and the sponsor are happy or made a conscious decision that there be no substantive outcome, that this is a process bill. I guess my biggest concern is that if you don't know what you're supposed to negotiate, having a process is fine, but you don't have a path. It's not like the Yellow Brick leads to Oz. We have to know where we're going. I think that the Holy Grail listed in the legislative declaration is insufficient to bound the process. I would like to go back to something that I think Chips talked about, John McClow talked about and it relates to Representative Rose's first question in terms of does this affect individual water users. Right now the bill is not clear about whether it's for basins to negotiate or whether it's about projects, individual projects, individual water rights' holders, negotiating with a basin that their project might affect. I think that if you're talking about basin to basin negotiations that the potential is you get into what we called in law school, a tragedy of the commons situation. Tragedy of the commons is imagine a field, there's a bunch of houses around the field. Everybody's got a cow. Everybody knows that if you put more than ten cows on that field, that field is going to crash. It's not going to be able to sustain the cows. There are 15 houses around the field. Now nobody wants to be the house with the cow who doesn't get to graze. So everybody puts their cows on there. You have 15 cows; the field crashes. It's in the community's best interest to have a cap, but no one water user is going to say, yes, I'll volunteer and give up my water rights so that there's a cap. I think that what you heard Chips Barry talk about is that Denver is negotiating individually. This www.escriptionist.com Page 35 of 49