Robert Lembke
Here's the second part of the Denver Post's series Liquid Assets: Turning Water into Gold [November 21, 2005, "A radical new vision"]. The article deals primarily with Robert Lembke and his organization the United Water and Sanitation District. From the article, "...Colorado's century-old system of allocating water was facing the prospect of radical change. 'Some think this is brilliant and wonderful,' Lembke said. 'Some think I'm the devil incarnate.' There's not much to see at the United Water and Sanitation District. It consists of a 1-acre patch of grass and thistles in rural Elbert County. No one lives there. There are no buildings - not even a shed - in this special government district. No water or sanitation lines run through it. There is no reservoir or water tank. Nor are there plans for such things. The district has no customers in the county that authorized its creation. Elbert County records list the acre as a helicopter pad site. It's just a piece of ground to meet the legal requirement that special districts have defined boundaries. Yet it serves as the vehicle for an ambitious scheme to create a water network serving future developments throughout Colorado's booming Front Range." Read the whole thing before it scrolls behind the Post paywall.
Here's a nice summary about water rights in Colorado from the Denver Post [November 21, 2005, "Records sketchy on who owns water"]. From the article, "Nobody knows who owns all of Colorado's water. Though the right to use water is treated like property, it's not recorded like property. Changes in ownership often are not recorded publicly anywhere. The state keeps records of every water right - its amount, location and when it was appropriated - but not necessarily who owns that right today."
More southeastern Colorado farmland is being taken out of production and dried up according to the Pueblo Chieftain. From the article, "More than 18,000 acres of irrigated farmland in Southeastern Colorado are being permanently dried up a decade after state well rules went into effect. The well rules, adopted in 1996, followed a Supreme Court decision in the Kansas v. Colorado lawsuit over the Arkansas River Compact. Well owners who had pumped groundwater from alluvial aquifers for half a century were required for the first time by the state engineer[base ']s office to measure flows from those wells and to augment the depletion with surface water rights. Part of the deal was that well users had to change any water right purchased for augmentation in water court within 10 years. Now, the first and largest water right change is about to hit court, but lawyers have been working to clear the way of obstacles and avoid a lengthy, costly trial for farmers already feeling the financial burden of the decision."
Category: Colorado Water
6:24:29 AM 
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