Water court logjam

“All is not well when it comes to water court,” said John Meininger, an attorney who represents irrigation well owners along the South Platte River. Some of his clients, he said, have been waiting five years for a final decision.
Meininger’s comments came at a public hearing designed to gather information on where problems lie within [...]

Denver Post Blogs on Yuma County DOW shut-out

Birds or Fish - What’ll it be?
Rarely has such a question like the one floating over eastern Colorado been posed to sportsmen. On one hand, we have the Colorado Division of Wildlife striving mightily to protect the water source for its hatchery at Wray, where 40 per cent of the state’s warmwater fish are raised. [...]

Colorado’s solution in pipeline

Story from OmahaNewsstand
As Nebraska and Kansas water czars wade closer to non-binding arbitration to settle troubles over sharing Republican River water, Colorado is moving ahead with plans to divert itself out of the fray.
“Frankly, when you’re in a hole, you need to stop digging deeper,” said Ken Knox, deputy state engineer for the Colorado Division [...]

Groundwater Levels Rise in South-Central Kansas, Drop in Western Counties

Groundwater levels rose in south-central Kansas this year as levels in the western part of the state continued a downward trend according to preliminary data compiled by the Kansas Geological Survey, based at the University of Kansas.

Landowners boycott DOW over water fight

“It will be hunting for friends and family only,” declared Don Brown.
The Denver Post  picked up on the Yuma Pioneer story about local landowners pledging to boycott all Colorado Division of Wildlife programs because of its participation on a lawsuit that would shut down irrigation wells. The landowners in the boycott would ban pheasant hunters and other DOW [...]

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,’ . . [...]

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, [...]