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7/14/2009 5:02:35 PM
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UCREFRP
UCREFRP Catalog Number
9367
Author
Colorado Water Workshop.
Title
Proceedings
USFW Year
1992.
USFW - Doc Type
Colorado Water Workshop July 22-24, 1992.
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<br />to you, that if we are the lowest kind of service economy -- a state <br />of busboys and waitresses - - ten years from now, we may have a <br />different impetus for use and development of water than we do now. <br />I think that the point Jim is making is not so much that the Compact <br />is the be all and the end all, but it is a piece of defense for <br />Colorado, to the extent that we want to better our political, <br />educational, and social standard of living. If we decide that we do <br />not want to, we do not have to rely, utilize, or call on the Compact, <br />in any sense. <br /> <br />Lori Potter: I just wanted to add two points. These points were a <br />little too heretical to make earlier. However, apparently I have not <br />been controversial enough. So, I will make them now. To begin with, <br />I want to discuss the use of this word entitlement. One viewpoint <br />challenges the very foundation of the Compact, or the idea that <br />political entities are entitled to water, and in the amounts that are <br />stated in the Compact. This viewpoint holds that the water belongs <br />to watersheds and the ecosystem. In this viewpoint, states are just, <br />again, accidents of political histories. Their boundaries are drawn <br />arbitrarily, with no regard to the health of the ecosystem, or the <br />things that are found within it, the things that depend upon it. This <br />view suggests that the whole notion upon which the Compact was <br />founded, the notion that states are entitled to water, is completely <br />fallacious and will in the big picture of history, maybe not in ten <br />years, be totally undermined. <br />Secondly, I wanted to address this number we have been using as <br />the remaining undeveloped Colorado share. I had some questions <br />earlier about whether environmental groups were going to support <br />development of that share. The point is that having written numbers <br />within the Compact gives those numbers a life of their own. For some <br />reason, because 800,000 acre-feet are left undeveloped, many <br />automatically subscribe to the view that it must be developed. I <br />would submit that those numbers are as arbitrary as the political <br />boundaries of the states that have these various shares that some <br />refer to as entitlements. If 800,000 acre-feet was 200,000 acre-feet, <br />we would be talking about ways to use 200,000 acre-feet. Yet, we <br />know, as John's paper discusses in length, and it is a theme of this <br />meeting, that all of the numbers in the Compact are off by some <br />percentage because they were calculated in years when flows in the <br />river were much higher than they are now. Therefore, that the 15 <br />million acre-feet, assumed to be in the river, was possibly a mistake <br />that formed the nucleus of the Compact. I think those are two basic <br />assumptions that we could question if we wanted to get very <br />philosophical. That is not on the agenda this year, but ten years <br />from now it might be. <br /> <br />Paul Frohardt: I have a feeling that those comments could generate <br />another hour or two of discussion, but it is past 5:30 and we should <br />bring this to a close. <br /> <br />42 <br />
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