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-':-. .~I.(E~!?EN~~_R ~~~T - ,- -- ~ . Monday. Aoril17:,elill!1t e --. -~ - -~ -----. ; 'IJ In Colorado, water is a fiery topic ." f.;. ,: ~ (J ; f:l- Draw the shades and send the children out of the room. We're about to utter the W-word - the surest way in Colorado polio tics to get into trouble. No. not "Duhya" as in Genrge W. Bush. IV as in "wet," And "war," something the IV-word has oflen triggered in lhe West. Yep. it's time 10 talk ahout Water .1gain. There. I said it. Now. it's out of the closet and intn the Colorado Legislature - where John the Lion Hearted Evans Il.Parker. will hring his SB 215 into th~ Senale Slate Affairs Committee today. Actually. the committee's full name is Slate, Velerans and Military Affairs. That's appropriate because, as previously noted. any attempt to talk sense about water in Colorado usually leads to war. Sen. John lhe Lion Hearted is a braver man lhan mof. This mof goes by the sobri- quet 01 Bob lhe Chicken Hearted in the pundit community because I've been hurned by writing ahout water before. And hold your e'mails. mixed-metaphor denouncers - if you don't think you can be hurned by water lhen you, friend. have never wT:t~en 1bout w?.ter in Colorado, 7;",; 3;.::'.~ T::;.~. 'i,=./~: ?" ~;l,S Ahead. That's what Sen. John the Lion Hearted is trying to get our stale to do - to plan ahead so that the next time We have a major drought We won'l rush oul and do very ex.pensive and very environmentally damagmg thmgs. The problem is thaI there are. rea~ons Colorado neVer plans ahead. pTlmaTlly the laelthat we would rather beat ~ach oiher over the head and ;l~the; r~gions with large oaken cudgels. Exhihit A is the lasl big foray into wa- ter planning, the Metropolitan Waler Sup. ply InvestlgallOn. initialed in 1993. How can I say Colorado doesn.t plan ahead when that study was funded "to explore cooperative solulions to future metropnli. tan area water supply needs thaI would minimize the conflicts nflen associaled with development of large-scale water supply infrastructure such as lransbasin diversion projects?" . Well. consider this stalemenl: "By de- sign. the MWSI did not explore new water ._-_....""'~-,~~ .. ""-~~..,..lI.o-..;"'l;"""""~ development proj- fall far short nf yielding the 300.01lii'iicre- eels involving sig. feet of waler for domestic and cclmm~- nincant new infra. cial purposes that the Front Range/iS eJt- struclure, nor did it peeled to need by 2020, if it adds t"~'."prdj- examine the poten- ected one million new residenfsl,rl'Or!a tial savings from tolal population of 3.5 million. "..r: additional water To close that gap will thus require' o~e conservation pro- or both of the "unmentionables" excluded grams." from the MWSI study, more conservation That's like me and/or more "infrastructure" - Le. refereeing the next dams and diversion projects. Evans"SB Colorado Rockies 215 would thus direct the Colorado Water game. But by de- Conservation Board 10 develop a plan by sign. there are two 2002 for a project lhat would increase things I won't do: I water supplies on both the Westell,ll and won't call balls and Eastern slopes. Specifically, Evans'wants I won'l call <trikes. the board to produce a plan tha~ would Bul if you need an opinion as 10 whether divert 120.000 acre feet of the 450,000 Babe Ruth's pilching was so gnod he'd acre feet of Colorado water that' now have made lhe Hall ol Fame if he'd never fiows unused to downstream users every hil a home run, I'm there for you. fans. year to serve lhe waler-short" 'Front The MWSI was allowed 10 explore four Range. In addition, Evans bill wouMIt. useful areaS: vide up to 40,000 acre feet of addill . Conjunctive use. The prime exam pie snrplus Colorado River water to be sto . is the effort by Douglas County. the Den- for exclusively Western Slope users: ver Water Board and Western Slope ex- The proposal has spawned the'usual perts sludying the possibility of bringing outrage on the Western Slope, where resi- water under the Colorado Divide in wet dents are denouncing another. Front . years and using it 10 recharge Douglas Range raid on "their" waler. But tbe Col- County aquifers drained in dry years. orado Constitution specifies thatllVater . Effluent management. This is a deli- belongs tn the people of the state.,"- all cate way of stating lhat we could drink the people - and not just those who,hap- our sewage. Squeamishness aside. there's pen to live close to ample supplies;:: : nn reason not to do that because effluent Environmentalists who join Western can be purified to standards well above Slopers in loathing diversions will reply those in our cnrrent supplies, Unfortu- hotly lhat we need to explore theLother nately. the praelice of dumping our efllu- taboo subject in the MWSI - inqaased ent back into the rivers has allowed conservation. They are. of course, .tight. downstream users to establish rights on But that's just one more reason we need tbose return flows. Tbus. there are limit- to expand the waler dialogue beyond the ed legal possibilities for consuming the cramped parameters nf the MWSI stu~. . water we now dump back into lhe Platte. Actually, I may have been wrong.to . Interruptible supplies. Wilh such predict Evans' bill would rile tbe Western plans. cities buy agricullural water from Slope. My readers in Colorado West i:e- farmers in times of drought. In wet years, pnrt they're SO pleased with John the LlilO when citie< don.t need the water. farmer< Hearted lhat they're heading tolDentl" can continue irrlgaUng. fnr a lormal banquet al which ho'U b. Hoc' guest of bonor. I .. . . "9.ther systems integration opporlu- At least, I guess it's a formal il<(Iocl".t I OIl1es. . !lureaucratesc for encouragmg beard th muttering something aboo( a tbe vanous water. entllles to work togetb- "necktlie;'arty." , er for more effICIent overall results. . .,.'.;" :>,"'~, "" I .. -; ,'"j>"' BoD.,ewegen (beweg.n~denverpo9t.comJ is These are, 10 varymg degrees, good and "_'~ ,ur/,edltOrfal page edtlor of The Post. tMj"has useful ideas. But all (our together woul~._~'~~..~ on state IIna local government ~t . . . .,:~t.;"..,. _ t BOB EWEGEN v -'--~'"'-'o: