Colorado Water
"Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over." So goes an old truism about water in Colorado. Well, the state is building up a war chest for fighting over the Colorado River, according to the Rocky Mountain News [December 11, 2004, "State preparing for water battle"]. From the article, "Colorado will spend as much as $2 million in the next two years to build a legal war chest shoring up its rights to the drought-plagued Colorado River. The new initiative comes as Lake Powell and Lake Mead - the river's giant storage ponds - have reached historic lows, triggering anxiety over future supplies from Los Angeles to Denver...The money is being spent on new computer models detailing how the river's supplies will be affected by ongoing drought and on creating a computerized historic archive documenting Colorado's use of the river under the 1922 Colorado River Compact. It also will pay for new legal research to help guide the state in the unlikely event that the lingering drought prompts new claims to Colorado's share of the river's supplies...Colorado's destiny is intimately tied to the river whose birthplace lies high in the Never Summer Mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park. It supplies roughly half the drinking water 3.6 million Front Range residents use annually, provides water for snowmaking from Winter Park to Vail and irrigates the peach and apple orchards that dot the Western Slope. All told, roughly 25 million people in the West depend on its liquid bounty."
"Three key issues: Under the 1922 compact, Mexico is entitled to 1.5 million acre-feet of water, to be delivered from surplus supplies. The Upper Basin was to contribute only in times of shortage. But since 1970, 750,000 acre-feet has been delivered from Lake Powell annually. That means, in Colorado's view, that the Upper Basin has delivered too much water; Colorado also has asked U.S. Secretary of Interior Gale Norton to reduce the historic outflow from Lake Powell, in light of the drought. Reducing the flows from Powell would mean the Upper Basin states could maintain a stronger buffer against a possible demand for extra water from Nevada, Arizona and California; Colorado also wants Arizona to stop storing river water it doesn't need in aquifers, further draining the two giant storage ponds."
The Colorado Snowpack is looking good heading into the end of the year, according to the Denver Post [December 1o, 2004, "Colorado's snowpack up, easing drought fears"]. From the article, "Every river basin in Colorado has risen above the 30-year average when it comes to snowpack and experts say the state appears to be bouncing back from a five-year drought...The Upper Colorado River basin today was at 110 percent of average...As of today, the South Platte, a major source of water for Denver and northeast Colorado, was 112 percent of the average. In one day, the Yampa-White River basin in the northwestern section of the state, went from 98 percent of average to 111 percent."
Here's the link to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
7:16:41 AM 
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