Water conservation is a face with two sides: one is the obvious side of saving a resource crucial for sustaining life; the second — which is often neglected but emerging as a national priority — is the link to energy consumption and conservation.

Colorado River water consumed yearly for agriculture and by the 30 million Westerners who rely on it now exceeds the total annual flow. A growing awareness of that limited flow is leading to increased scrutiny of urban development — especially projects that require diverting more water to the east side of the Continental Divide.

The world population will increase to more than 9 billion from 6 billion by 2050, based on data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To feed that growing population, global food production must increase by 70 percent. This increase will need to occur with less land and water, and with fewer resources than are available today, and it cannot be accomplished with current technology.

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.

When the House subcommittee on water and power met recently in Greeley, its members heard testimony from a variety of sources on the future of water in Northern Colorado and the state in general.

A coalition of seven sustainably driven corporations and foundations has united to raise funding and awareness for the environmentally threatened Colorado River. Initiated by New Belgium Brewing and the Clean Water Fund, the campaign, will donate money to environmental nonprofits in the Colorado River basin working to promote water conservation and protect the river.

Wyoming has an unusual problem among the states in the Colorado River system: lots of water and, other than supporting some fine trout fishing, no way to put a significant amount of it to use.

Mom-and-pop farms are making a comeback in the Rockies, although they may be larger than in the past and increasingly more likely to be run by just mom. That’s the upshot of a the 2010 State of the Rockies Report Card, recently completed by students at Colorado College. The annual report card has looked at water and natural resource issues common to Rocky Mountain states since 2004.

If you build it, they will come. And, if you don't, they won't. Such is the thinking behind a policy released late last month by the Environmental Protection Agency that instructs states to adopt smart-growth principles in allocating the $3.3 billion in water infrastructure funding that the federal government doles out each year.