Gunnison Basin Water: No Panacea for the Front Range

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Executive Summ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Gunnison River Basin is one of Colorado's greatest treasures. From its ori- gin on the ridgeline of the Continental Divide to its mouth near Grand Junction, the basin is home to a wide variety of people and livelihoods in a breath-taking land- scape. It is hard not to fall in love with its majestic mountain peaks, green valley bot- toms, and unhurried pace of life. Among the basin's most valuable assets is water. Water's rhythm and the life it brings can be found everywhere: in hay meadows, hydropower turbines, and tum- bling down streambeds-to be enjoyed by anglers, rafters, local communities, and the plants, fish, and other animals the river supports. In contrast to the rural Gunnison is the growth and sprawl on Colorado's Front Range. As the Denver metro area expands its web of houses, highways, strip malls, and business parks, its population could climb to an estimated 3.2 million people by 2040. This unchecked growth may create an annual municipal water demand of over 870,000 acre-feet in the Denver metro area, roughly doubling today's demand. Water providers along the Front Range are anxious about how to meet this demand. Some suggest importing water from the Gunnison River is the answer. For decades, proponents of a trans-mountain diversion from the Gunnison hoped to find "free" unappropriated water available. Many early proposals died under the sheer weight of cost and absurdity. More recently, the Union Park Project died when the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a water judge's ruling that there is not enough "free" water available for a large-scale export. But, because the Court hinted that some water might be available for purchase from the United States at Blue Mesa Reservoir, some still believe that Gunnison water is the answer to Front Range needs. This Report challenges that belief. It explains what is becoming clearer by the day, that the waters of the Upper Gunnison already are fully appropriated and fully put to use within the basin. This leaves little, if any, available for use elsewhere. The Report provides a snapshot of how the Gunnison River watershed works today. It explains how much water the major drainages create and how that water is used, both in- and out-of-stream, as it makes its way down valley to join the Colorado River at Grand Junction. It highlights the major facilities constructed by humans along the Gunnison in the past 100 years, including the oldest federally supported irrigation project in the country, the State's largest reservoir, and towns and cities that can't help but grow in the midst of such a spectacular landscape. The Report also takes us back in time, explaining how water has shaped the basin's history and the people and places that make that history. It explains the basin's water rights, delving into an area of law steeped in tradition older than the State itself. Gunnison Basin Water • iv •