Sunday, January 22, 2006

Public support for environmental protection on the decline Science Blog: "Public support for environmental protection in the United States as a federal government priority has dropped substantially since 2001, a researcher from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, has found after analyzing results from a prominent annual public opinion survey. "Michael Greenberg, a professor and associate dean at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, also found that with the exception of wanting Washington to focus on job creation, the public is less interested in a range of domestic priorities, including crime prevention and health care management." Category: Colorado Water 8:54:38 PM     HB1124 The Denver Post editorial staff is in favor of HB1124 - The Rotational Crop Management Bill [January 22, 2006, "Water rights bill aids farmers"]. They write, "Water rights can be bought and sold and are now avidly sought by Colorado's growing cities. But while cities traditionally have been able to buy the rights of farmers and just dry up their fields, such total diversions hurt the economy of the communities that lose the water. As a result, cities such as Aurora and Parker have pioneered partnerships in which farmers sell part of their rights and continue farming - sometimes rotating their fields by irrigating half of them in any one year, much as dryland farmers have traditionally done in semi-arid eastern Colorado. "Unfortunately, it hasn't always been clear that farmers can sell part of their water rights as easily as they can sell all of them. That's because it's unclear whether conserving water is a 'beneficial use' under the law, thus raising the specter that a downstream user with junior rights might claim the right to use the water saved by a crop rotation scheme. The Hodge-Owen bill, HB 1124, allows our water courts to approve such conservation plans. The result is that farmers can stay in business while selling part of their rights to cities or other buyers." 8:55:06 AM

© Copyright 2006 John Orr. Last update: 12/29/06; 11:01:53 AM.