Addressing one of the big problems facing all of the urban and rural parts of northern Colorado, Jeff Stahla, Public Information Officer at Northern Water, gave us a brief history and current status of water management in northern Colorado at our noon meeting on September 18. Historically, Stephen Long, in mapping this part of the American west, named it “the Great American Desert” “wholly unfit for cultivation”, in spite of the presence of vast herds of buffalo and widespread evidence of indigenous human habitation.  One benefit of this exaggeration was that it discouraged any influx of Spain from the south, Britain from the north, and Russia from the west.  Once American settlers from the east became established in the area, they realized that water management, including trans-basin moving of water from where it was abundant to where it was scarce, would be necessary, especially in the inevitable dry years.  This led to the construction of Grand Ditch starting in 1890, Chambers Lake between 1886 and 1910, and the Larimer River Tunnel in 1911.  The Larimer River Tunnel, reducing the amount of water available to Wyoming, downstream from that tunnel, resulted in Wyoming suing Colorado and establishing the precedent that an upstream state may not use water in such a way as to harm a downstream state.  This also established the fact that the US constitution allows states to make compacts covering such things as water rights as long as those compacts are approved by the US Congress.  This was one of the first steps toward the Colorado River Compact, ultimately governing water rights and access on the Colorado River and allowing the movement of Colorado River water across the Continental Divide to the Front Range area (the Colorado-Big Thompson Project), this providing some 50% of the water that is available today in the Front Range. READ MORE...