Tuesday July 5, 2022
Summit Daily —
Colorado water leaders met on Thursday to discuss the recently released draft for the 2023 Colorado Water Plan, which outlines actions that aim to create a more water resilient state.
The plan focuses on four “interconnected action areas,” including resiliency planning, thriving watersheds, robust agriculture and community. It describes 50 “partner actions,” or project ideas that could be supported by Water Plan grants, as well as 50 “agency actions,” to support local projects, conservation and wise-water development. Overall, however, basin roundtables and stakeholders identified more than 1,800 potential future projects statewide, and 321 are in the Colorado Basin with 36 being in Summit County. In total, over $20 billion would be spent on the projects by 2050.
Russ Sands, senior program manager of water supply planning for the Colorado Water Conservation Board, said that projects in the database are designated as near-term, midterm or long-term when it comes to getting them done. They’re also not all infrastructure projects. Some may work toward water conservation and others may be educational projects or environmental.
“I think the Water Plan does a good job of highlighting that in our Water Plan grants. There is the need for multi-benefit, multipurpose projects,” Sands said. “So a lot of those projects, whether they’re 15 years out on the horizon, or the kind of things that could start next year, and we’re certainly trying to move forward, but we’re hoping that all of those are really going to work increasingly hard to provide multiple benefits across the state.”