Here's Part III of the Denver Post's series Liquid Assets: Turning Water into Gold [November 22, 2005, "Suburban aggression"]. From the article, "Desperate to find enough water to grow, Front Range cities pull the plug on restraint, turning to secret agents and meetings, willing to mortgage their future to make sure the glass is full years down the road." The article is a tale of two cities, Thornton and Aurora, and their attempts to secure a sustainable water supply for the future. Read the whole article before it scrolls behind the Denver Post paywall.
Here's a short article on the cost of water in Colorado from the Denver Post [November 22, 2005, "For high-dollar rights to water, Colorado's the place"]. From the article, "When Idaho bought water rights on the Snake River this year to protect trout, it paid farmers $325 per acre-foot - about 326,000 gallons. In Colorado, cities buying water for human use have paid farmers as much as $20,000 per acre-foot...Unlike many states, Colorado lets cities permanently acquire water rights from those who previously owned them. But it does so through a uniquely rigid water court system that may take a decade to judge how a single city's purchase affects the existing rights of everyone else on the river. Colorado's population centers and water resources lie on opposite sides of the Continental Divide. Eighty-eight percent of its people inhabit the South Platte and Arkansas basins - rivers that carry only 15 percent of Colorado's natural stream flow. While Colorado's mountains spawn rivers that nourish much of the West, the giant federal reservoirs corralling those rivers lie downstream. Among Western states, only rain-soaked Oregon has less water stored in Bureau of Reclamation dams. Some states freely allow cities to pump groundwater from river basins. Colorado requires such pumping to conform to the seniority system of water rights on its rivers. Many Colorado cities apply what amounts to a hefty newcomers' tax in the form of water connection fees on new homes, using the principle that growth should pay its own way. Eastern Colorado rivers are already overappropriated: The court-decreed rights to their water often exceed the water they contain. That forces the state to step in, shutting off junior rights until senior rights downstream are met. On top of that, Colorado has obligations to make sure some water leaves the state for neighboring states."
Meanwhile the drought in Colorado from the earlier part of the 21st century is but a memory now, according to the Rocky Mountain News [November 22, 2005, "Drought is receding like a bad dream"]. From the article, "Colorado's drought recovery continues, with many parts of the state receiving above-average amounts of snow and rain in recent weeks, according to the Colorado Climate Center.
The moisture means the state's reservoirs continue to rebuild their drought-stricken supplies. Overall, stored water supplies stand at about 95 percent of average, with levels varying from region to region."
Category: Colorado Water
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