Exec Summary_11-15-04

• Title: Executive Summary
• Date: 11/15/2004
• Author: CWCB
• SWSI - Doc Type: Executive Summary

Executive Summary
E~a~an Raun~t~ble~ - where local interests met to
exchange ideas, review and present water supply and
demand data, summarize planning initiatives, and help
guide the development of water supply and demand
objectives and strategies for achieving the objectives.
This was a consensus building process to address
specific issues within each river basin. A portion of each
meeting was also devoted to obtaining information and
comment from the public.
Roundtable participants in each basin included
representatives of:
^ Agricultural and ranching community
^ Business, development, and civic organizations
^ Environmental interests
^ Federal agencies (e.g., U.S. Forest Service [USFS],
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation [BOR])
^ Local Governments not directly providing water
(municipal, county, and regional)
^ Municipal water providers
^ Recreational interests
^ Water Conservancy/Conservation Districts
^ CWCB Board Member(s) for the basin
^ Technical support was provided by: the State
Engineer's Office (SEO), Division of Wildlife (DOW),
State Parks, and select federal agencies
~~n~r~l P~bli~ ~utr~~~h - intended to provide a forum
specifically for presenting information to and obtaining
feedback from the general public. The pubic was kept
informed of the progress of the study, and invited to
provide public input and feedback, through a variety of
activities, including:
^ The 2-hour public meeting portion of each of the 30
Basin Roundtable Technical Meetings
^ A series of press releases that were issued at key
milestones throughout the project
^ Presentations to numerous community and
stakeholder organizations, including agricultural,
environmental, and business groups
^ A public comment period specifically reserved for
SWSI at each CWCB meeting
~~
^ A series of e-mails to a database of over 1,400
Colorado individuals and organizations with an
interest in water
^ A series of two rounds of Public Information meetings
conducted through the course of SWSI
^ A project website that was updated throughout the
study
One of the key goals of the Basin Roundtable and public
involvement process was to learn: What is important to
people in Colorado when they consider how water should
be used and managed? Through the SWSI process, a
set of nine major "water management objectives" were
developed, refined, and then used to evaluate options for
addressing Colorado's future water needs. These
objectives represent the overarching interests in water
management - they define major goals of water users in
clear, understandable terms.
Recognizing that each individual will value these
objectives in different ways - that is, each individual will
assign a unique importance to each objective relative to
the others - individual preferences for the objectives
were identified and tracked for each Basin Roundtable
member in each basin. Similarly, the relative importance
of the objectives from one basin to another was different,
indicative of the diversity of the basins and the ways
water is used in each.
Several overall observations can be made from the
basin-by-basin assessment of Basin Roundtable
members' preferences for the SWSI water management
objectives, summarized as follows:
^ Sustainably I~~~t Municip~l and Indu~trial (M~I)
Demands: A wide range of preferences was evident
in each basin. Municipal water interests, as expected,
~~
Statew~itle Water Supply Inii'iative
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