To the credit of the current administration, the discussion and related work products have been moved forward to a point never before conceived - in that most major basins have established true "needs assessments" that are framed in a consistent manner - utilizing available data to identify water supply needs based on expected water demands, past river administration, and currently identified projects and processes that local and regional planning entities have developed. Bravo. The discussion has also been recently framed by a collective visioning effort that has received substantial buy-in from a wide geography of users with seemingly diverse water interests including environmental groups. Double bravo.
However, one key stakeholder appears not to be at the table in a manner that is meaningful and required. That is the largest single landowner in the state that controls, to some extent, the majority of the land from which our water supply is derived - that being the Federal government. Certainly the local National Forest Service and Parks Service, as well as BLM and BRec, staff have been included in the discussion, but no key Federal decision-maker is a member of the IBCC.
This may be by design. But is it a key failing in the effort of identifying the future vision for the state, and the related water needs, if the key land owner is not present?
Their is a reasonable argument both ways regarding inclusion of the Federal government. There are good reasons for Colorado's citizens to try and work through the various thorny issues without the 800 pound gorilla in the room, since we have a number of local and regional issues that only we can identify and characterize. The needs assessment, for example, which looks at needs, does not as of yet deal with estimating watershed yields - that is another study (at least for the Colorado River). So having no federal representation helps to ease the discussions and allow (perhaps) for a more open sharing of ideas and concerns.
But not having the Federal government hinders development of any true resolution to key issues like managing beetle kill areas, or impacts of large fires, or evaluating forest management techniques to improve forest health while increasing watershed yield.
"Despite being portrayed as a villain, timber harvesting in the form of thinning can substantially counteract the impact of fire regrowth on water yield. The benefits of regrowth thinning have been widely studied throughout Australia. In Melbourne's catchments, strip-thinning trials have shown that up to 2.5 million litres a year of additional run-off can be generated from each hectare of thinned regrowth. A program of thinning the 1939 regrowth could add billions of litres of water to our storages.
Western Australia has been quicker to take advantage of thinning as a water management tool. Earlier this year, a $20 million, 12-year thinning program was initiated in a substantial segment of Perth's catchment following four years of exhaustive public and stakeholder consultation. Every 1,000 hectares thinned is expected to deliver an additional one billion litres of run-off into the Wungong Dam a year."
This is an extract from an opinion piece by Mark Poynter first published in The Age and just republished by On Line Opinion, entitled 'Fired-up Forests, Have More Impact Than the Loggers'. Read the full article here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5213
Interesting, quite a bit of the research prepared to discuss the relationship between forest management and watershed yield is somewhat aged (see New Mexico SEO Literature Listing), but it does exist. No doubt Colorado State University is looking at this as this is written (as well as other State schools).
Another key issue that Colorado's water providers and interests on the IBCC are going to have to face is who is going to pay for the expected future water supply projects, which include everything from structural storage to instream restorations to species management and protection. I have heard figures as high as $6 billion just for infrastructure will be needed by 2030, but their are others that likely have a more accurate number than that. If $6 billion is close, then what is the infrastructure cost from 2030 to 2050? Another $6 billion? $10 billion. We just aren't used to talking about these kinds of costs.
To wit, funding for the kinds of projects currently being discussed by the IBCC is not going to be easily raised without some kind of Federal support. Any project that includes federal lands, wetlands or waterways with Federal jurisdiction, and/or federal facilities will also carry a need for Federal dollars to support planning and evaluation efforts. This further indicates that relative importance and value of having Federal organizations involved upfront in the planning and analyses that are ongoing within the State. We simply are going to need their help.
The bottom line is that meaningful progress on this as well as numerous other issues with a Federal nexus will need to be addressed head on for the IBCC to get to closure - closure meaning a resolution to more sustainable water supply for the current and future citizens of Colorado. The Federal government, especially the Department of the Interior, but perhaps the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the US EPA may also need to be "on the team" earlier, rather than later, to help us get solutions that are both feasible and timely.
Just my two cents.
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