25d ‎(2)‎

• Board Meeting Date: 11/18/2007
• Description: CWCB Director's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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looked at ways to prevent future crises like last year's shutdown of more than 400 agricultural wells.
The Futures Panel recommended more management of water rights, by allowing referees to serve like
special masters, and to allow for emergency procedures where water might be needed on a seasonal basis,
hourlis said.
The South Platte Task Force was more specific on what needed to be done, requesting the Colorado
Supreme Court to appoint a panel aitned at streamlining court procedures. Recommendations included
allowing referees to sense as special masters, requiring referees to be engineers and improving training,
hourlis said.
Water judges and referees meeting last week, however, agreed more input is needed from those who use
the courts, rather than just those who run them. hourlis said water lawyers and water users both need to
be represented on a statewide panel.
Colorado water law worked fine when it only looked at how to appropriate water that wasn't spoken for.
New interests, uses, transfers and diversions have complicated the process, however. Water cases are
expensive and can take years to decide because of complex engineering studies aimed at protecting water
rights or showing there will be no injury through a change of use.
Other lawmakers were reluctant to have Ritter or even the courts appoint a panel without taking
occupations, geography and politics into account.
Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, said she wanted to make sure a broad array of water court
users is represented. "I've talked to landowners who say they don't have the money to fight for their
surface rights."
hourlis assured the panel the intent of the groups she represents is not to change the underlying principles
of water law or interfere with the other branches of government.
GROUNDWATER SURFACES AS TOP WATER ISSUE: Groundwater use and storage have
become the critical water issues in Colorado, a top state official told a conference in Colorado Springs
looking at state growth and its impact on aquifers.
"We have to look at sustainability," said Harris Sherman, director of the Department of Natural
Resources. "We must do whatever we can to live within our means. We cannot borrow against the
future."
Sherman detailed a long list of problems associated with groundwater at a conference sponsored by El
Paso County Water Authority, the Arkansas Basin Roundtable and the American Groundwater Trust.
About 250 people are attending the two-day conference. In one year, 2.7 million acre-feet, or 880 trillion
gallons, are pumped in Colorado, 75 percent of it for agriculture. About 18 percent of the state's
population, most of it along the booming Front Range, depends on wells for their domestic supply. Some
of the water cannot be replaced. The quality of pumped water is becoming an issue. Lawsuits involving
groundwater have sprung up in every basin, Sherman said.
"We are seeing the full fury of the drought in the South Platte and Arkansas basins," Sherman said. "If I
have anything important to say today, it's this: We're all in this together."
Three of the four major river basins in the state -South Platte, Arkansas and Rio Grande -are
overappropriated. The fourth -the Colorado River -may have unappropriated water, but interstate
Flood Protection • Water Project Planning and Finance • Stream and Lake Protection
Water Supply Protection • Conservation Plarming