“The Colorado Basin Roundtable’s Basin Implementation Plan takes a firm position that when it comes to the Colorado River, another big transmountain diversion of water from our basin to the Front Range of Colorado would damage the regional recreation-based economy and heap further impacts on the environment and agriculture.
HERE’S WHY: Between 450,000 and 600,000 acre feet of Colorado River water already permanently leaves the basin annually through existing transmountain diversions. It’s 100 percent gone, none of it coming back into the system through return flows. What’s more, a number of the Roundtable’s constituents have signed or are working on prospective agreements that could move up to another 140,000 acre feet through various projects. In other words, we already face a transmountain-sized project.
HERE’S THE WORRY: Existing streamflows are critical to sustaining the recreational economy in our basin, which is home to the state’s most popular ski resorts as well as robust rafting, fishing, and hunting industries and other sought after outdoor experiences. Agriculture in the basin, especially in the Grand Valley area, remains a vital pursuit of statewide interest that depends on water supply. Further degraded streamflows threaten higher levels of pollutants.
HERE’S ANOTHER WORRY: If Colorado overdevelops the river system beyond Colorado River Compact of 1922 legal limits, curtailments loom for many water users, perhaps most significantly for current transmountain diverters. Colorado already knows this compact lesson from other instate basins: over development of a river ultimately means undevelopment of agriculture to deal with the legal consequences.
For these and many more reasons spelled out in this document, we discourage the assertion that a transmountain diversion is in this state’s best interest. Still the Colorado Constitution does not permit the legal argument of “not one more drop.” So we make the case that Colorado should take immediate steps to best use the water it already has. Painful deliberations about per capita consumption, land use and landscaping lie ahead.”