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that would work better. Water rights will be developed to meet demands – water rights <br />are there to serve demands. <br /> <br />Rick Brown: We wrestled with this in SWSI , and were going to aggregate demands by <br />county level. When we did it that way, then water districts don’t coincide with <br />boundaries. We then had to disaggregate to counties; service areas beca me important in <br />the Metro area. Any thoughts on the scale and scope issue? <br /> <br />Eric Kuhn: If you have information on the major river basin level, I think that would be <br />more useful than counties (as they are somewhat artificial boundaries). Go by hydrologic <br />units. <br /> <br />Rod Kuharich: There has to be match between water rights data and other data available <br />on county the level. <br /> <br />Peter Binney: What assumptions are you going to use going into the study? Will climate <br />change be a factor? What is the basis of your hyd rology? Tree ring data, synthetic <br />hydrology for 500 years? Will you pick up some of the extended droughts we know were <br />out there? As far as projecting in to the future, that involves some of the risk issues we <br />were talking about earlier. <br /> <br />Rick Brown: Through SWSI we spent significant money dealing with just this issue – <br />disaggregating and re - aggregating demands and getting consensus as far as how to do <br />that. Keep in mind that it is a big effort. <br /> <br />Mike Shimmin: I want to make a comment about data. A mistake that engineers often <br />make when they begin a study is that they select a data set and they buy into it too much. <br />You’ll never get a data set that is going to get complete consensus. Data is kind of in the <br />risk analysis. It is not about creating a magic buy - in; it’s about acknowledging the risk <br />factors, especially when the data does not give us the magic answer. It all goes back to <br />the risk assessment piece, and being honest about the risk that the data we choose might <br />not represent the future we ll. <br /> <br />Randy Seaholm: I don’t think we want to see this study g et into climate models. There i s <br />so much uncertainty with those. I would propose looking at sensitivity, and examining <br />risk to water supply. Does that approach make sense to all of you? <br /> <br />Melin da Kassen: If the premise is that you’re going to focus on supply first, you can talk <br />about risk factors, and then you don’t have to spend a lot of money on creating good <br />demand data. Right now we need to know different things, and by the time we get to t he <br />demand point, the needs assessments may be done. <br /> <br />Eric Kuhn: A question for Director Sherman and others. I really see this as a question for <br />leadership – “How far do we go into the future?” Climate change is the elephant in the <br />room on this study. I would like to have more dialogue down the road on that. I was <br />drafted to participate in a private effort – the Colorado Climate Project. Randy, you’re <br /> 8 <br />