Feeding people who come to Colorado in the next 50 years is at least as important as providing them with drinking water, but the message may be lost without facts to back up the assertion.

The nagging suspicion that the state may be trying to solve the wrong water problem crept up again at this month’s meeting of the Arkansas Basin Roundtable. “We’ve established that there is a need for municipal and industrial water by 2050, and it’s a discussion point at a very high level in the state,” said Reeves Brown, a Beulah rancher who also sits on the

A task force should be formed to evaluate the proposal to build a pipeline from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming to serve Colorado’s Front Range, a new report says. A state report funded by $40,000 through the Colorado Water Conservation Board at the request of the Metro and Arkansas basin roundtables was released Monday.  The report recommends three possible ways to structure

A study to determine if state law helps or hinders new strategies to share water was approved Wednesday by the Arkansas Basin Roundtable. The study would help projects like the Arkansas Valley Super Ditch, or any effort that would allow farmers to retain water rights yet lease water, to determine what limitations could work against the concept, and what laws might help implementation.

Colorado’s efforts to share water resources to avoid drying up farmland are highlighted in a report being considered by the Western States Water Council, a policy arm of 18 Western governors.

Scientists are trying to understand how water diverted to irrigate crops makes its way back to the Arkansas River along tributaries or as groundwater throughout the basin.

The Arkansas Basin Roundtable wants to advance a plan to protect transmountain diversions by setting up a storage account at Blue Mesa Reservoir on the Gunnison River. The roundtable is developing the plan in conjunction with the Gunnison Basin Roundtable.

Sixty years ago, El Paso County had half the population of Pueblo County. Today, its growth has created a water need that threatens to crowd others out of the picture. That’s one of the reasons why the Arkansas Basin Roundtable has been meeting for the past five years, explained Gary Barber, chairman of the roundtable, at a public outreach meeting Thursday.

Gunnison Basin water users are bristling at suggestions made last summer to the Interbasin Compact Committee, saying their concerns about economy and environment are equal to Front Range alarm at potential changes in the “urban landscape.” The Gunnison Basin Roundtable responded this month to letters from the Arkansas Basin Roundtable and the Front Range Water Council in July asking

A new report by the Arkansas Basin Roundtable summarizing the first four years of its work sparked comments this week from roundtable members. On one hand, most all are pleased with the work so far.