BOARD01340

• Board Meeting Date: 1/12/1998
• Description: 1998 Legislative Issues - Strategic Water Planning
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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STATE OF COLOAADO
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Colorado Water Conservation Board
Department of Natural Resources
ill Centennial Building
, 31 3 Sherman Street
Denver, Colorado 80203
Phone: [phone]
FA)(: [phone]
DATE:

Roy Romer
GovernQI

Jilmes S.lochhetld
Executive Director, DNR

Daries C. Lile. PE.
Director, CWCB

January 20, 1998

TO:

Colorado Water Conservation Board Members

Peter Evans QeA<.v € A- L

FROM:

RE:

January 28-29, 1998 Board Meeting, Agenda Item 15,
Strategic Water Planning

Last March, you had an informal workshop to review the Long Term Financial
Projection for the CWCB Construction Fund and to review potential uses of the
Severance Tax Perpetual Base Account and Severance Tax Operational Account. At the
conclusion of that workshop, you indicated a relatively high degree of satisfaction with
the efforts made by our staffto identify and collect information concerning the needs for
as many potentially feasible water resource projects as possible. However, you also
indicated a desire that we initiate a series of regional meetings around the state to gather
further information and to identify any important regional differences in future water
resource needs which the CWCB should take into consideration.

Since that workshop, we have prepared preliminary plans and attempted to initiate
that sequence of regional meetings in July, September, November, and again at the
beginning of 1998. During these efforts, we also began to prepare for the 1998 review of
the Board's Long Range Plan (last revised in 1995), thinking that these meetings also
present a good opportunity to quickly review the existing Long Range Plan and ask for
suggested improvements. However, as we have scrambled with cope with Chuck Lile's
absence, the Romer-Schoettler discussions concerning the proposed Animas-La Plata
Project, the Section 7 Consultation for the 15 Mile Reach, the statewide assessment of
floodplain management needs, the Metropolitan Water Supply and Denver Basin Aquifer
investigations, the funding for declining aquatic species programs, the mitigation of flood
damages in 13 counties, the initiation of a decision support system for the Rio Grande,
the Interim Water Committee activities and the many other programmatic
responsibilities, we have not been successful in getting the proposed meeting process
started.

Based upon this frustrating experience and discussions among the workgroup
organized by the Colorado Farm Bureau to follow up on its January 1997 "Colorado
Water Development Study," I would like to propose an alternate course of action. I have
discussed this alternative with Jim Lochhead and with the Senior Staff and they are
inclined to support this alternative.

A copy of the proposal developed by the Farm Bureau workgroup is attached for
. your review. In essence, it proposes that the CWCB initiate a series of "stakeholder