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<br /> <br />For every fifth year from 1950 to 1975, the U.S. Geological Survey <br />estimated the magnitude of water use in the United States (MacKichan, 1951, <br />1957; MacKichan and Kammerer, 1961; Murray, 1968; Murray and Reeves, 1972, <br />1977). In 1977, members of the Congress of the United States recognized the <br />need for uniform, current, and reliable information about water use and <br />directed the U.S. Geological Survey to establish a National Water-Use <br />Information Program (Mann, Moore, and Chase, 1982). This program developed <br />into an ongoing, jointly-funded, Federal-State cooperative effort. The <br />Colorado Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Resources, Office <br />of the State Engineer (hereinafter called the State Engineer's Office), has <br />participated with the U.S. Geological Survey in the National Water-Use <br />Information Program since its inception. A nationwide water-use data base has <br />been established and is included in the U.S. Geological Survey's Water-Data <br />Storage and Retrieval System (WATSTORE). Beginning in 1980, the U.S. <br />Geological Survey's every-fifth-year water-use estimates (Solley and others, <br />1983, 1988) have been produced as part of this program. <br /> <br />Purpose and Scope <br /> <br />The purpose of this report is to present water-use data for Colorado that <br />were gathered as part of the National Water-Use Information Program's data <br />collection effort for 1985. The aggregated data from all States are presented <br />in a national report (Solley and others, 1988), and a brief discussion of <br />Colorado wat~r use is presented in th~ National Water Summary 1987 (U.S. <br />Geological Survey, in press). In this report, the data for Colorado are <br />presented in greater detail, and methods used to gather and estimate water-use <br />data are documented. <br /> <br />National guidelines required that data be reported by county and <br />hydrologic cataloging unit. This task was accomplished by compiling data for <br />geographic units resulting from the intersection of county lines and <br />hydrologic cataloging unit boundaries. There are 300 of these units, called <br />county cataloging units, in Colorado. Data from these small units then could <br />be aggregated to produce both county and hydrologic cataloging unit totals. <br />Data from the hydrologic cataloging units were further aggregated to produce <br />totals for hydrologic subregions. Graphical summaries of water-use data for <br />each county and each hydrologic subregion are presented in this report. The <br />county and hydrologic subregion data also are reported in tabular form in the <br />"Supplemental Data" section at the back of this report. The location and name <br />of each of the 63 counties in Colorado are shown in figure 1. The location <br />and hydrologic subregion code of each of the 17 hydrologic subregions in <br />Colorado also are shown in figure 1; the codes and names for the subregions <br />are listed in table 1. Data for each of the 300 county cataloging units and <br />data for each of the 94 hydrologic cataloging units in Colorado (fig. 2) are <br />not presented in this report but are available upon request from the Colorado <br />District Chief, U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division, Room H-2104, <br />Building 53, Denver Federal Center, Denver, Colorado (mailing address: Box <br />25046, Mail Stop 415, Denver, CO 80225-0046). <br /> <br /> <br />2 <br />