Colorado River Basin "Moving Forward" Report Could be Moving Faster
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DENVER - It's as clear as a mountain stream - water conservation has to play a much bigger role in the Colorado River Basin states in order to bridge the giant gap between water demand and supply.
Recommendations just came out for new water-management strategies, and whitewater paddlers don't think they go far enough.
Nathan Fey, Colorado stewardship director with the group American Whitewater, thinks improving current water-use systems should be the priority. Both in cities and on farms, he points out it's less expensive and quicker than building new infrastructure, when time and money are major factors.
"They're just not efficient, they waste a lot of water," Fey says. "So if we were able to optimize systems like that, we can save water and then, have the discussions about what we do with that saved water."
The Bureau of Reclamation report, called Moving Forward, is in response to the 2012 Colorado River Basin study that quantified the critical water shortages ahead for the Basin states without big changes in water management policy. Fey says river recreation is only one facet of the economy that would see severe impacts.
Funding for any of the options is bound to be a political football. But Fey hopes the report will prompt more people to examine them and feel a sense of urgency about letting elected officials know what they want.
"With the dire conditions in California and the Southwest, with our current drought, I would hope people's interest in this issue of supply-and-demand gap is being piqued," says Fey. "This report doesn't solve the issue; I think the outcome here will be more public support for taking action."
Fey says the planning process has been arduous, but everyone who participated should feel good about the results.
"We're all on the same page now," he says. "We've shared information, we've shared lessons learned; we have a pretty robust list of options that can be explored. That's a great outcome from this report, and it's a good outcome of the process that we've all gone through."
He adds the next phase is selecting the recommendations from that list, and getting those projects funded and implemented.