At its first meeting this year, the Colorado Water Conservation Board voted to delay the appropriation of an instream flow water right on the lower San Miguel River until January 2011, in order to allow time to develop off-stem water storage in the watershed.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a far-reaching water bond intended to rebuild California's crumbling water system and fund new dams to save up the precious resource for dry years.

An armada of giant yellow earthmovers on the prairie south of Denver is racing to dig one of Colorado's biggest water-supply reservoirs in decades — a hole 180 feet deep across 1,400 acres — designed to wean suburbs off waning aquifers. But the water to fill this reservoir? Not yet secured.

With demographers forecasting 35 percent more people in Colorado by 2035 and climate scientists predicting 15 percent less water available in the Colorado River Basin by mid-century, something has to give. More and more, public officials, business groups and environmental organization have been talking about additional dams and reservoirs to augment those built in the mid-20th century.