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others could not or would not finance. These projects, like the Colorado Big-Thompson in northeastern and the Fry-Ark in southeastern Colorado, provided imported, supplemental water to existing farms, grovving cities, and new businesses along the Front Range. At the start of the 21st century the most severe drought of recorded history-combined with the over-appropriation of Colorados interstate share of Platte, Arkansas, and Rio Grande river waters, remind us that (1) junior rights are subservient to senior lights in the priority system of water administration, and must be curtailed in times of short supply unless juniors replace their depletions to the stream by augmentation plans; (2) the most valuable water rights available to serve Colorado's population growth in the coming decades are the existing se- nior water use lights of the mutual ditch and reservoir compa- nies; (3) efficient water use and water conservation practices are indispensable to stretching the available water supply for all the uses we now recognize as beneficial, including recre- ation and the environment; (4) in light of a cunent population of 4.5 million persons and 2 million+ additional residents ex- pected by 2030, Coloradans must find a way to use whatever Colorado River basin whatever water is still available under the 1922 and 1948 compacts; and (5) this magnificent state and its people probably cannot sustain themselves into the future unless public entities can continue to acquire the use of mutual ditch and reservoir company water rights through leases and/or purchases. How the water right holding farmers and the water right needing cities-the urban, suburban, and rural people- get along will largely shape Colorado's way of life, look, and feel. The 2005 session of the General Assembly has chartered statewide and local basin roundtables in pursuit of this worthy work. Can there. be accords on agricultural water transfers that combine limited permanent changes of water rights with pooled, rotating water leasing and land fallowing programs? Can the Front Range urban area, particularly fast -growing Douglas County water suppliers who are now 90 percent dependent on non-renewable Denver Basin bedrock aqui- fer water, join cities like Denver and Aurora to form water supply agreements to keep agriculture in business and rural communities viable, while bringing needed water to the cit- ies? Will Colorado's new statewide water needs and water supply assessment process, with the aid of the roundtables, harness durable vision to well-chosen action? Will the ag- licultural users who wish to continue farming be protected from protracted absurdly expensive war-like litigation? As non-farmers join ditch and reservoir company boards because of changes in share ownership, the most important conversations about these and other questions concerning the lay of the land and waters may occur along the ditches and the laterals, on the shores of the reservoirs, and in the meet- ing rooms where the members of the board of directors and mutual company shareholders meet and vote-and wherever buyers and sellers, lessors and lessees, of mutual ditch and reservoir company shares confer to contract with each other. So it's humbling to learn how these very important-but largely unknown-to-the-public local water organizations- are adapting to changes they neither sought nor expected. That's the aim of this handbook, to educate shareholders and citizens about the role of these quintessential community or- ganizations. May this book be studied well! May it help Coloradans in good ways. The perpetual ag11cultural democracy envisioned by Thom- as Jefferson and John Wesley Powell, and many of the multi- racial settlers who became Coloradans before us has become the great residential democracy of the plains, livers, canyons, mesas, and mountains of this the great headwaters state. Where people are is where water will go. And because contemporary citizens value fish and wildlife, parks, recre- ation, and open space, water will go there also, through pub- lic and private investment. We are dependent on the rivers and interdependent on each other. To put our money, muscle, minds and hearts into this community work of cultivating the fruit of the public's water resource is Colorado's enduring heritage and its praise- worthy destiny. . A Profession of Rivers Men and women reflecting lakes and rivers should a profession humble make. A person who professes rivers for a living must profess them living, too. From mouth to source profess them by degree and gravity bodies entire unto themselves, capable of feeling vibrant, sick, at rest, stirred up, seeking, open to flowing through the energy of others, returning to one's self. Rivers erode, eat firmaments, uproot, or quietly fill the silk of cornstalk capillaries, by rivers are we called to serve; . Rivers trace the face of the land and of every creature, lakes reflect heaven's depth and breadth, Career enough for any man or woman, fish or bird, state or nation, lake or river. -Greg Hobbs References Citizen's Guide to Colorado's Water Heritage (Colorado Foundation for Water Education 2004). Justice Greg Hobbs, In Praise of Fair Colorado, The Prac- tice of Poetry, HistOlY, and Judging (Bradford Publishing Company 2004). Kenneth R. Wright, Water for the Anasazi (American Pub- lic Works Association 2004). Margaret Young-Sanchez, Tiwanaku, Ancestors of the Inca (Denver Art Museum, University of Nebraska Press 2004). . Ditch & Reservoir Company Alliance