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With this in mind, we recommend that, in Colorado, future water supply management and <br />development efforts should adhere to five basic principles: <br />➢ Make full use of existing water supplies and reusable return flows. <br />➢ Expand water supplies incrementally to utilize existing diversion and storage capacity <br />better. <br />➢ Recognize that market forces drive water reallocation from agricultural to municipal <br />uses. Mitigate the adverse impacts to rural communities of these transfers, whether <br />permanent or temporary. <br />➢ Involve affected publics and address the inevitable environmental and socioeconomic <br />impacts of increasing water supplies. <br />➢ Recognize the fundamental political and economic inequities and the adverse <br />environmental consequences of new transbasin diversions and emphasize the most <br />efficient utilization of existing transbasin water to avoid the need for new transbasin <br />projects. <br />Over the past decade, many of Colorado municipal water providers' supply -side <br />strategies have embodied several of these principles. They generally produce the most <br />economical, least risky and disruptive, and most easily implemented courses of action to <br />augment existing supplies. <br />E. The Remainder of the Report <br />The remaining five sections of the report deal with: 1) the hydrologic impacts of the <br />drought; 2) an estimate of the economic impacts (total and avoidable); 3) the response by <br />water managers; 4) future plans for supply augmentation; and, 5) an integrated approach <br />that incorporates conservation, cooperation, more efficient use of existing supplies and <br />incremental supply augmentation. <br />