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Section 2 <br />Conservation and Efficiency Technical Roundtable <br />2.4.5 Bringing Together Supply <br />Planning and Conservation <br />Elements (Integrated Water <br />Resources Planning) <br />Water conservation should be considered in the <br />larger context of sound water management. Also, <br />water conservation planning should be integrated <br />into as many aspects of local water resource <br />planning as possible to achieve overall water <br />resource management goals. Water conservation <br />planning can help water providers identify where <br />future planning efforts need to be focused. The <br />planning process helps the provider look at the <br />effect of water conservation on future water supply <br />and demands, and how water conservation may <br />affect timing and cost of new water supplies and <br />other investments. Integrated water resources <br />planning is designed to put water conservation on <br />an equal basis with water supply development <br />when analyzing options for meeting future water <br />needs. <br />In an effort to approach water conservation <br />planning in an integrated manner, the CWCB has <br />developed a Model Water Conservation Plan <br />Development Guidance Document <br />(http://www.cwcb.state.co.us/conservation/pubs.h <br />tml), which provides a process and template with <br />instructions for use to support meaningful water <br />conservation planning through the integration of <br />water conservation planning with water supply <br />planning. The nine planning steps outlined in the <br />guidance document encourage water providers to <br />comprehensively analyze and evaluate their water <br />supply systems in the context of supply and <br />demand, and calculate the impacts resulting from <br />various conservation measures and penetration <br />rates. Coupled with a complete implementation <br />2.5 Conclusions and <br />Recommendations <br />As its mission, the M~SCI Water Conservation TRT <br />set out to "develop a deeper understanding and <br />greater consensus on conservation and efficiency <br />for municipal, industrial, and agricultural water <br />uses." In the category of urban water demand, the <br />TRT made significant advances that forward our <br />understanding of the important role of water <br />conservation and efficiency in municipal water <br />planning. Successes include: <br />~ Reaching consensus on how conservation may <br />affect system reliability under various scenarios <br />~ Quantification of potential long-term savings <br />available from conservation measures <br />~ Development of a range of potential water <br />conservation savings from select measures that <br />were in a comparable range to potential water <br />conservation savings identified in the SWSI <br />report <br />~ Common understanding on reaching some <br />issues <br />Limited progress was made on agricultural water <br />efficiency and this remains a significant challenge. <br />Based on initial work, there appears to be some <br />opportunities to achieve additional efficiencies in <br />agricultural water use. However, since agricultural <br />return flows are used by downstream water users, <br />at a watershed level there are significant <br />limitations in the overall net potential savings that <br />can be realized. Nevertheless, since agricultural <br />water use accounts for over 85 percent of total <br />water use in the state, follow-up efforts should <br />include this group of water users. This issue is <br />discussed in Section 3 of this report. <br />2-22 FINAL DRAFT <br />