Front Range Water Council Response

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• There will be additional storage facilities to better regulate available water and to address physical water shortages during specific times of the year in certain areas within the various river basins. • Additional water may be available to Colorado under the Colorado River Compact due to Colorado's involvement in seawater desalinization and providing that water to California and taking equivalent amount of water within Colorado. There will be additional water demands to meet recreational and fishery requirements. E. General: The entire state may experience: • More stringent administration and enforcement of compact obligations. • The need to adapt to the impacts of climate change upon water availability and administration. IL Is this the Colorado the Front Range wants to see? The Front Range Water Council would not presume to speak on behalf of others around the state, but shares its perspective. Future problems may lie not so much in where the Front Range finds itself in 50 years relative to water supply, but how it gets there. Economic necessity, citizen demands and wise planning will dictate that there will be adequate water supplies to meet municipal demands, though a shift in the political position of the electorate could modify those demands. In other words, should the voters decide that the price of new water supplies is too high or the social/environmental costs associated with growth too great, they may force a shift in land use policies that curtails increased water demand. There could even be a push to develop economic, social and cultural infrastructure, aided by tax credits or other incentives, in areas of the state where supplies are more readily available so as to reduce demand along the Front Range corridor. However, based on historical precedent, this is unlikely. The need for economic opportunities, the centralization of Western populations in urban corridors, and the "quality of life" search by people from other regions undermines the possibility of such an occurrence. Hence, assuming that water will find its way to points of greatest demand/value, the 50 year outcome relative to water conditions along the Front Range may, in very general terms, be an acceptable one, albeit one which will result in the sacrifice of certain values related to agricultural production. However, one needs to examine more closely both the costs associated with arriving at that result and the acceptability of water related impacts to "other" geographic areas within the state if this is indeed the result. III. What would we like to see and how do we get there? Under the current water development scenario, an unwarranted amount of time and expense may be invested in realizing water supply objectives along the Front Range. This will include energy expended in administrative proceedings, judicial proceedings, negotiations, mitigation initiatives, unnecessary infrastructure construction, duplicative studies, etc. By way of example, there will be instances where the following occurs: • Administrative/judicial proceedings attempting to prevent the beneficial use of unused or under-utilized storage capacity. 5