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Rep <br />anything <br />SOMETIMES, THE BEST WAY TO DEFINE WHAT'S GOING ON IS TO DOCUMENT THE OBVIOUS. <br />TAKE NOTE OF WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING AT DINNER, IN THE HALLWAYS DURING BREAKS AT <br />CONFERENCES OR AFTER READING A NEWS STORY. <br />IN A SENSE, THAT'S WHAT THE STATEWIDE WATER SUPPLY INITIATIVE TEAM DID. FOR 18 MONTHS, THE <br />TEAM CANVASSED THE STATE TO FIND OUT WHAT WAS GOING ON, WHO HAD WATER, WHO NEEDS IT AND <br />WHAT WAS LIKELY TO HAPPEN IN THE NEXT 25 YEARS. <br />The results weren't a big surprise to anyone who follows water in the West. The population continues to grow; some entities <br />have water, some have plans, some have reasons to worry; and in the next two and a half decades, cities "will increasingly look <br />to agricultural water to meet their needs, creating impacts on rural Colorado that need to be recognized and addressed." <br />The findings went into the $2.7 million report, delivered to the Colorado Water Conservation Board in November, now in <br />the hands of the state legislature. <br />While the report is final, the person who shepherded the project sees it as anything but. <br />"The question now," said Rick Brown, "is how do we take the findings and make them solutions. One of the key things is <br />to follow through. We didn't want to force solutions. We need to get back with people, get momentum behind the ideas so they <br />become solutions." <br />Phase II of the project began in March when the river basin roundtables — groups of water users and providers who helped <br />create the SWSI report — gathered again. Brown said this is the hard part: matching up people and projects. <br />"The next phase is to get to the tangible, to take it beyond meetings and words, to take it to a different level," Brown said. <br />By Lori Ozzello Farmland west of Berthoud, 1968 <br />4 <br />