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For more on Colorado's Water Plan, listen to our Connecting the Drops statewide call-in show, produce in partnership between the Colorado Foundation for Water Education and Rocky Mountain Community Radio. |
By Nelson Harvey
One evening last fall, Becky Mitchell’s neighbor caught her in the driveway and posed a question that any concerned, curious and perhaps slightly nosy neighbor might ask: “You seem awfully busy, why have you been gone so much lately?”
Mitchell, who is the head of water supply planning for the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), explained that she’d been supervising a team of 10 staffers charged with the rather Herculean task of assembling and drafting Colorado’s first official state water plan. The overarching goal: to bridge an anticipated and potentially catastrophic water gap of roughly 500,000 acre-feet, or 163 billion gallons, per year that could surface by mid-century if state demographers’ forecasts are borne out.
Looking back on that driveway encounter, Mitchell believes she could have conveyed the importance of her work on a more personal level. “I could have said to my neighbor, who loves gardening, that hopefully in 25 years she’ll have the same Colorado she has now,” Mitchell says. “She’ll be able to keep working in her garden, rafting, skiing. To be honest, I’m hoping that my neighbor doesn’t even notice the impact of the water plan, because she lives in the same Colorado or better.”
Read more: Colorado’s Water Plan, NOW: Where We Landed at the Close of 2014
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For more on public engagement around Colorado's Water Plan and to hear voices from the story, listen to our Connecting the Drops audio coverage, produced for a partnership between CFWE and Rocky Mountain Community Radio. |
By Justin Patrick
Colorado’s Water Plan is touted as a democratic, self-actualized document produced “by Coloradans, for Coloradans.” That ideal, of course, can only be reached with one key ingredient: Coloradans. Widespread participation ought to ensure the many different perspectives about what should—or should not—be included in the new state water plan are represented. Not only did producing the first draft of Colorado’s Water Plan rely on the work of many existing stakeholders, but public input, say the plan’s authors, has been and will remain essential to refining a water plan that reflects Colorado residents’ many values.
Education and outreach efforts leading up to the first draft of Colorado’s Water Plan have been extensive to date. Some go back as far as 2005, before the plan was even conceived, when official mechanisms like the Public Education, Participation, and Outreach workgroup (PEPO) of the Interbasin Compact Committee were established solely to foster public engagement around the work of the state’s basin roundtables. Other efforts have been more recent, as the plan has moved—and continues moving—from conception to draft phase to finalization.
By Nelson Harvey
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| Colorado Water Conservation Board director James Eklund is responsible for overseeing development of Colorado's Water Plan. |
When the final draft of Colorado’s Water Plan lands with a thump on the governor’s desk at the end of 2015—or, more likely, when it appears with a cheerful ping in his email inbox—it will be the product of what James Eklund, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), calls “the largest civic engagement project in Colorado.” That project, the statewide system of grassroots basin roundtables established by the 2005 Colorado Water for the 21st Century Act, has played a pivotal role in the creation of the water plan, but despite the hundreds of meetings held, thousands of hours worked, and tens of thousands of pages reviewed, the true test of the plan lies ahead.
That test is whether state officials, roundtable members, lawmakers and water providers can successfully implement the plan, and whether they can leverage its findings and recommendations to stave off a statewide water supply reckoning in the decades to come. The alternative outcome involves the plan—which is, after all, a non-enforceable advisory document—dying a quiet death on the shelf of a government office. Such a fate seems unlikely given the outpouring of time and public input that has gone into the effort so far, but implementing it successfully will still require action and cooperation from all corners of the water community. What’s more, it could require improvements to the laws and regulations, planning and permitting processes, and funding mechanisms that affect building new water projects and conserving, sharing and reusing Colorado’s water.
Read more: Colorado's Water Plan, NEXT: Where we need to go further
By Jayla Poppleton
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Water Planning in the USA:All light orange states have |
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In Texas, no water project can get a permit if it isn’t in the state water plan. In California, where an expressed goal of the state plan is to guide investments in water innovation and infrastructure, the plan essentially sets up for justifying—or not—ballot initiatives. Arizona’s plan, referred to as its strategic vision, is promoted as a comprehensive supply and demand analysis and framework to guide water planning efforts as far as 100 years out. New Mexico uses components of its water plan—statements of water need from its 16 regional plans—to inform litigation and negotiations with Texas over the Rio Grande Compact.
With the development of Colorado’s Water Plan, Colorado becomes one of the last western states to have a state plan for water, but it isn’t a replica of what anyone else has done. “Two years ago, Colorado Water Congress had a number of people in to represent what other state’s plans look like,” recalls John Stulp, special water policy advisor to Gov. John Hickenlooper. “The person from Texas told us, ‘Whatever you do, don’t copy ours. Make sure it’s a Colorado water plan. It needs to be done by Coloradans for your Colorado needs.’”
The structures of American states’ water planning run the gamut from more top-down approaches, such as those in California and the Dakotas, to grassroots, locally driven processes that blow even Colorado out of the water—but don’t necessarily make them more effective—like that of Washington, where 34 watershed planning units contribute to the plan, compared with Colorado’s nine basin roundtables. The plans vary accordingly with each state’s water supply picture, past experience, and legal structure.
In Colorado, where water rights are treated as private property rights, the grassroots process of state water planning that has been conducted through partnership with the basin roundtables is inherently needed. For other states, a more top-down approach works. Either way, there’s a balance to be struck between too much command and control and too much parochialism, where individuals are building fences around their resources.
