Rural economies tied to water

“We have to understand that agriculture is the fiber of the state. We’re challenged as a state with agriculture as to how we preserve that tradition for our children.”  – Colorado Governor Ritter at 17th Annual Governor’s Forum  on Colorado Agriculture

Water politics

Water Politics from the Ground Up
A new report from Western Progress with a new report [pdf] authored by water law experts Denise Fort and Lawrence MacDonnell and informed by a bevy of water and policy experts.  This article contains an eight-point set of solutions to the problem.
New West Politics: Voice of the Rocky Mountains
“More and more, [...]

Future of water in the west

New York Times article October 2007
“. . . . The biggest issue is that agriculture consumes most of the water, as much as 90 percent of it, in a state like Colorado. ‘The West has gone from a fur-trapping, to a mining, to an agricultural, to a manufacturing, to an urban-centric economy,’ . . [...]

Republican River Basin Issues Subject of March 5 Conference

Mike Petersen, formerly NRCS Soil Scientist, who helped the Yuma Conservation District with its Water and Nutrient Management Project, is slated to speak at this conference. 
From the McCook Daily Gazette:  “Making Cent$ of Every Drop … ” is a conference geared toward area producers and business people looking for a greater understanding of what’s going [...]

Pipeline for the Republican River Compact

Robbing Peter to pay Paul . . from a non-renewable resource and funded by irrigated farmers
From the Sterling Journal Advocate Sat., Feb. 12, 2008
“On Jan. 22, RRWCD (Republican River Water Conservation District) signed the second of two contracts to purchase designated ground water rights that will produce nearly 15,000 acre-feet of water per year for a [...]

(Book) Blue Covenant: The global water crisis

“The thing that I’m trying to establish with the first chapter, which is called “Where Has All the Water Gone,” is that what we learned in grade five about the hydrologic cycle being a closed, fixed cycle that could never be interrupted and could never go anywhere, is not true. They weren’t lying to us, [...]

Ethanol Boom

Newsweek article on Ethanol in Yuma County
. . . . In the arid regions of the American West, water has always been a precious, liquid gold. But in Adamson’s home of Yuma County, Colorado, two hours east of Denver, the stakes just got higher. Thanks to the boom in ethanol production spurred by green-energy concerns, corn [...]