Colorado Water Workshop - Breckenridge, Colorado

Summit County, CO  >  Breckenridge, Colorado  >  Local  >  Colorado Water Workshop
Colorado Water Workshop Call me a glutton for punishment, but instead of enjoying our mountains last week, I spent three good summer days sitting indoors at the annual Colorado Water Workshop in Gunnison. Among other things, I learned that the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the principal water agency of our state government, defines drought as something that "occurs when the demand for water exceeds the available supply of water." Since Colorado demand has exceeded the available supply since 1874, when Greeley and Fort Collins nearly went to war over control of the Cache La Poudre River, it appears that we live in a state of perpetual drought. But some years are drier than others, and our 2000-03 drought ranks only 16th in dry spells since 1437. The 1953-55 drought was 12th, and the worst droughts were in the 1840s and 1580s. We know this from tree-ring research conducted by the Paleoclimatology Branch of the National Climatic Data Center and the University of Colorado in Boulder. In wet years, trees grow more, so the rings are more widely spaced. Some evergreens - Douglas fir, ponderosa and piñon - can live for centuries (one fir on the South Platte drainage dates back to 894, or 1,110 years ago). By comparing ring spacing for the past 100-plus years to the recorded stream-flow measurements during that time, the scientists can establish a relationship and come up with some reasonable estimates of stream flows that happened back when nobody measured or kept records. Why does this matter now? For one thing, it lets us know just how dry things can get. For another, the lack of such information 80 years ago could put us in a water bind now. The Colorado River Compact of 1922 was largely a result of the work of Delph Carpenter, a Greeley lawyer. Carpenter, according to biographer Dan Tyler, believed in working from accurate historical data. But they didn't have the tree-ring studies back then, just a couple of decades of measurement at Lee's Ferry, Ariz. Those years, we've since learned, were part of a wet cycle. The records available during the negotiation of the compact showed an average annual flow of about 18 million acre-feet in the Colorado River. Thus there appeared to be ample water for the provisions of the compact, which are simplified here: 7.5 million for the Upper Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah), 7.5 million for the Lower Basin (Arizona, Nevada, California) plus an extra million if available, and 1.5 million for Mexico (half from each basin). A 1948 agreement gave Colorado 51.75 percent of the Upper Basin share -in theory, 3.88 million acre-feet. But the long-term data show that the Colorado River can reliably produce, on average, somewhere between 13.3 million and 15 million acre-feet a year. Take the lower number, subtract the 8.25 million owed to the Lower Basin and Mexico, and there's 5 million for the Upper Basin; Colorado's share is about 2.6 million. And we may already be using 2.8 million acre-feet a year from the Colorado River (there aren't many solid numbers for this). This means that no matter what you hear from politicians who say Colorado needs to develop its unused share of Colorado River water, we might well have already developed our share, and perhaps a little more. Things get even more interesting when you note that Powell Reservoir continues to drop. One reason it was built was to guarantee deliveries to the Lower Basin, but if there's not enough water behind Glen Canyon Dam, then the deliveries will have to come from somewhere upstream of the reservoir. As Eric Kuhn of the Colorado River Water Conservation District explained it, every trans-basin diversion in Colorado that began moving water after June 15, 1929 (the date of the federal act authorizing Hoover Dam), would have to be shut down then: Denver's Moffat Tunnel and Dillon Reservoir systems, Colorado-Big Thompson, Fry-Ark, Twin Lakes, etc. None of them could legally divert a drop of water to the Eastern Slope, home of most of Colorado's population, industry and agriculture. Kuhn called this a "sobering thought," although two water attorneys who followed him pointed to a possible loophole in the compact. It says the upper states "shall not cause the flow ... at Lee's Ferry to be depleted below" the average of 7.5 million annual acre-feet. "We could just say we didn't cause the depletion, the drought did," one lawyer said. Just what might happen then - California National Guard troops stationed at Colorado headgates? - makes for dismal but interesting speculation. It made me wish that the tree-ring studies had been available to Delph Carpenter, and it made me glad to get home, where it's been raining almost every afternoon and the hillsides are greener than anyone can remember for this time of year. Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) ) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.

Summit County Vacation Rentals | Breckenridge Real Estate | Breckenridge Resort Lodging | Keystone Real Estate | Keystone Lodging | Frisco Real Estate | Frisco Lodging | Dillon Real Estate | Silverthorne Real Estate | Breckenridge Ski Rentals | Colorado Mountain Real Estate | Summit County Real Estate | Colorado Mortgage

Breckenridge Summit County Mountain Lodging Real Estate Skiing Restaurants Rentals.

SummitColorado.com is your source for Breckenridge Lodging and Real Estate, Keystone, Frisco, Dillon, Copper Mountain, Silverthorne / Summit County Colorado Real Estate. * Legal Summit Colorado . com


Summit County Information: SummitColorado.com ©2012
info@summitcolorado.com
106 N. French Street
Breckenridge, Colorado 80424