Ditches cross high mountain passes. Tunnels have been bored through solid rock. Magnificent engineering feats over the past century have gone into creating a system that brings water from the west side of the Continental Divide, where the state receives 80 percent of its precipitation, to the east side, where 80 percent of the people live.
Most of the projects that bring water over were conceived and largely executed more than 30 years ago, and new plans to import more water to the Front Range in recent years have been fraught with legal challenges, environmental entanglements and technical headaches. The Statewide Water Supply Initiative, a study by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, lists five general ways the state could import more water from the Western Slope in Phase II. SWSI's Phase I concluded there will be more pressure on agricultural transfers if new sources of transmountain water are not employed.
Protection of flows for recreation and wildlife now plays a part in every water decision. The state's focus shifted in 2005 from top-down decisions to grass-roots input when basin roundtables and the Interbasin Compact Committee were formed. So far, no answers to the state's water dilemma have surfaced, as roundtables spent most of the first two years sorting out issues within each of the nine basins. The roundtables recently have begun meeting with other basins in search of common ground, however...
One ray of hope in the transmountain water question is a 20-year agreement signed in November that resolves several ongoing issues with the Colorado River Compact and suggests how seven states - Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming - might share future shortages or surplus on the Colorado River. It also outlines operations of the major compact reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, to balance the interests of the lower basin states with the upper basin...
The Arkansas River basin imports more than 125,000 acre-feet annually, approximately one-fifth of the average flow in the river east of Pueblo. The largest diversions are Twin Lakes, the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project and the Homestake Project.
The issue: Prevailing theories suggest climate change will reduce the amount of water and change the timing of flows in the future.
What's at stake: Cities and farmers have come to depend on transmountain supply sources originally intended as supplemental water supplies. Cities, in particular, now rely heavily on imported water.
Why it matters: Fewer transmountain imports will put more pressure on native water supplies that already are overappropriated.
Who's involved: The Pueblo Board of Water Works ultimately will obtain 60 percent of its water from transmountain diversions. The Twin Lakes Canal and Reservoir Co. provides water to Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Aurora and Pueblo West. The Fry-Ark Project, through the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, provides supplemental water to cities and farmers up and down the valley. Statewide, roundtables and lawmakers are beginning to look at interbasin issues.
