BOARD01541

• Board Meeting Date: 1/24/2006
• Description: WSP Section - Statewide Water Supply Initiative
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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Dave Miller
P. O. Box 567 Palmer Lake, CO 80133
[phone] Fax [phone]

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December 16, 200'5

Board of Directors
Colo. Water Conservation Board
1313 Sherman 721
Denver, CO 80203

Subject: Saving Colorado's water for cities, farms, & environments

Dear Directors:

The enclosed letters explain how existing federal reservoirs can be operated with advanced
pumped-storage technology, to save Colorado's wasted Colorado River entitlements at high
aitiiUde fur statewide drought and growth needs. High storage projects can quickly unite
competing Front Range utilities, which are unnecessarily drying up our state's farms and river
environments with exorbitant prices for irrigation rights. Urban and rural users can enjoy lower
water costs throughout both slopes.

The current feeding frenzy for irrigation water is the result of a thirty year failure to develop
Colorado's vast unused legal share of the Colorado River, for statewide consumptive needs. All
other western states are wisely protecting their cities, farms, and environments with large state-
federal storage projects, conceived with professional statewide water planning processes.

Colorado is the only western prior appropriation state that expects its historically competing local
water interests to create multi-basin storage projects for multiple purposes, without benefit of
professional statewide planning direction. The resulting conflicts and gridlock are providing a
bonanza for lawyers, speculators, and California. Consumer costs are escalating, while farms and
river environments are being excessively dewatered. Colorado desperately needs to correct its
self-defeating water management practices for the benefit of current and future generations.

As a starter, the Legislature's 1937 and 1982 charters for the Colorado Water Conservation Board
and the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority should be revisited. These
lawful state mandates require priority planning, protection, and development of Colorado's
vulnerable inter-state compact entitlements for statewide needs. Colorado is by far the state with
the most to lose. if global warming, population, and political realities change the 1922 Colorado
River Compact, as currently being discussed. Artificial water shortages will not control growth.

I respectfully request a one hour meeting to brief and discuss Colorado's vital state-federal high
storage solutions, and growing water management problems, at your earliest opportunity.

Thank you, and have a merry Christmas and happy New Year.

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Dave Miller
Strategic Water Planner

Encls: Letters to Governor Bill Owens & Bureau of Reclamation dated Dec. 8 and Nov. 11, 2005,
regarding high storage & Central Colorado Project solution for five major river basins.