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provide protection for an intra-basin transfer, such as Loveland or Greeley transferring water to Aurora. ± Dry year leasing should be considered. In years of normal precipitation, the farmer would keep the water to grow crops. In drought years, however, the farmer would lease that water to a municipality, which would in turn pay the farmer compensation for lost profits. ± Dry year leasing is more complicated than it appears. One problem is that this is a beneficial change in use that a water court would not have approved, and under current law one can?t encumber those rights for some speculative future event. ± Another issue is certainty. Municipal providers have a bond with their customers to provide for their health, safety and welfare. These dry year leases are not long- term and are not reliable; they may exist one year and not the next. Municipal customers need reliable and certain supplies. It might make more sense for cities to purchase the water outright so it is available in dry years, but then lease it to farmers during normal precipitation years. Pueblo was noted as an example of a municipality that has taken that approach. ± How does a farmer start and stop his operations under dry-year leasing? Farms have employees, crops, and other commitments, and they also need certainty about their water. They could find themselves in a situation where they have already planted their crop and then find themselves in the middle of a dry summer. Then, how do they lease? ± Value-added crops are another consideration. Value-added crops are those that require more effort and long-term planning and are less subject to dry year leasing. Dry-year leasing might not recognize the fundamentals of the agriculture business. Growers develop long-term relationships with their customers, and if they can?t supply them, they can lose those relationships. Once a relationship is lost, it is difficult to get it back, particularly in light of the fact that the business is highly competitive, and other growers are more than willing to jump in and take advantage of a business opportunity. Storage capacity needs to be increased: ± New storage needs to be based on a cost-benefit analysis where the costs and the benefits are clearly and broadly defined. Whether to build new storage, and the kind of storage to build, needs to be based on a broad array of considerations: environmental, economic, irrigation conversion, impacts on agriculture, impacts on endangered species, to name a few. You have to balance costs and benefits. At some point, the project can show a useful yield on a reliable basis that gives the economics on which to base the decision. ± Agriculture rights tend to be more senior; those holding more senior rights typically need less storage. ± One municipality sees storage primarily as a means for drought protection. In good years, cities in the basin generally have sufficient supplies, but in dry years, they need the help that storage can provide. Most municipalities have a 50-year planning horizon that has served them well. The larger and mid-size municipalities with strong planning efforts, such as a 50-year time horizon, were better equipped to deal with the current drought. Protecting against a 100-year drought is not affordable for municipalities. A 50-year horizon is a practical horizon from a cost perspective. Anything longer than that is cost-prohibitive and would need to look at other solutions because of the cost barrier.