ASPEN — Public policy and political will must shift as dramatically
as the winds that have whipped Colorado’s record wildfires, experts
say, or the state’s residents will continue to pay a higher and higher
price for forests that are dying due to global climate change.
In the American West, the battle for control of water never really ends, but on Tuesday a major agreement among key Colorado players promised greater future cooperation to get more water to more people more consistently. The Colorado River Cooperative Agreement was signed by Denver Water and representatives from Grand County, Summit County, the Colorado River District and the Clinton Ditch & Reservoir Company.
Anybody out there need a job today? Congressman Ed Perlmutter is hosting a job fair this morning from 9 am until noon at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds.
An extraordinary set of circumstances produced the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The question now is whether the compact and other laws and treaties collectively called the Law of the River are sufficiently resilient to prevent teeth-barring among the seven states of the basin in circumstances that during the 21st century may be even more extraordinary.
As first reported last week by Colorado Independent contributor Allen Best of Mountain Town News, a sweeping water accord called the “Colorado River Cooperative Agreement” was announced today in Grand County by political leaders from Grand, Summit and Eagle counties, along with officials from Denver Water, the Colorado River District, the ski industry and other major stakeholders.
Waters leaders from Denver and several Western Slope organizations have reached a broad if still unsigned agreement described by one of the participants involved as a peace pact, with consequences that extend from Grand Junction to several Denver suburbs.
A pair of articles on the future of two very different Colorado rivers this week in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and the Denver Post surfed right past the very real environmental concerns presented by ongoing energy development.
Denver Water may divert a lot of water from the Western Slope, but it doesn’t avert the Western Slope from decisions on how that water is used.
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