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I I I I I I I I I DRAFT 8/24/92, Page 6 1. Protection of Existinf! SUDDlies -- Water suppliers with surplus water have traditionally been reluctant to enter into agreements or obligations for long-term sharing of supplies because they need to insure the availability of water to meet their own future needs. The Denver Water Board has taken the position that their ability to share surplus supply and water from "interim" supply sources is limited to the extent necessary to reserve adequate water for the buildout of the City and County of Denver. Therefore, integration of water supply systems must provide mechanisms that insure that those water purveyors with surplus supplies will not be water short in the future as a result of the near-term integration of their water supply system with others. 2. Water SUDDly Security Durinf! Drouf!ht -- Municipal and industrial water users require dependable, long-term sources of water and have a limited ability to withstand shortages. While occasional minor or even moderate drought-related shortages do not result in significant economic damages, the costs of extreme shortages are high. Consideration of drought events is therefore an essential part of municipal water supply planning. Given the high costs of new supplies, the tradeoffs of providing increased drought protection versus tolerating planned-for shortages should be carefully evaluated from local economic and public preference perspectives. , I I I I I I I I I I However, few communities have directly addressed such questions, but have simply planned their water supplies to withstand an arbitrary historical drought event, typically the historical 1950's drought. It has been estimated that the recurrence interval of the 1950' s drought ranges from one in forty years to one in seventy years, depending upon location in the front range. Given this infrequent level of occurrence and the relatively low level of economic damages resulting from occasional moderate shortages, it may be that many communities are inadvertently "overplanning" for drought. 3. Additional Water for Future Growth -- The Denver Metropolitan area is expected to remain a relatively high growth area for the next twenty to thirty years due primarily to net migration to the area. The population of the metro area is expected to increase by more than 30 percent over the next twenty years from the current level of approximately 1,722,000 people to 2,259,000 people by the year 2010 and 2,538,000 by the year 2035. (COE 1988) The EIS estimated that these population growth levels would result in overall metro area water supply shortfalls of approximately 98,000 acre-feet in 2010 and 163,000 acre-feet in the year 2035. The actual shortfall may not be as large as projected in the EIS Due to slower than expected economic growth during the last few years and the development of additional supply projects that were not included the EIS projections. Regarding the northern Colorado region, the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District has completed a draft Regional Water Supply Study which addresses future municipal and industrial water supply needs for the northern front range area (NCWCD 1991). According to that study the northern region is expected to grow faster than the metro Denver region. According to the Scenario B projections in that study (which are based on State Demographer's county-level population forecasts) the area to the north of the Denver Water Supply EIS study area is expected to increase by about 60 percent over the next thirty years from thecurrent level of approximately 510,000 people to 813,000 people by the year 2020.