9367 ‎(4)‎

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9367
• Author: Colorado Water Workshop.
• Title: Proceedings
• USFW Year: 1992.
• USFW - Doc Type: Colorado Water Workshop July 22-24, 1992.
• Copyright Material: NO

713,000 acre-feet of transbasin diversions in Colorado, New
Mexico and Utah.63
However, the projected Upper Basin limits may have
already created somewhat subtle repercussions and they are
virtually certain to produce direct constraints in the
future. As the Westwide Study Report on Critical Water
Problems Facing the Eleven Western States cautioned:
Although the water supply of the river is adequate
to meet quantitative needs today and in the years
immediately ahead, this does not mean that there
are no current problems related to water shortage.
To the contrary there are and they are severe. If
the Upper Basin States are to develop their
resources at a rate commensurate with their
expressed aspirations it is a certainty that
shortages will develop within a time frame that
directly affects decisions which need to be made
today. Most resource development undertakings, be
they for agriculture, industry, or other purposes,
require an assured water supply for at least 40
years to justify making initial investments. The
fact that there is no actual shortage of water
today nor will there be on in the immediate future
is of little comfort to those interest whose future
depends upon an assured water supply for the next
40-50 years.64
The Interior Department's Report on Water for Energy in the
Upper Colorado River Basin projected that before the year
2000 a 5.8 m . a . f . per annum limit would curtail some Upper
Basin water uses.65 That study assumed a level of water use
by the energy industry which will apparently not be
realized. But the Westwide study, based on varying sets of
assumptions about the intensity of water use, also concluded
that the Upper Basin would face restrictions by the year
2000.66 A Bureau of Reclamation probability analysis has
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