 Hello and welcome to the backstory today. The backstory on all things water related in Colorado and more specifically to Longmont, Colorado. My name is Tim waters. I am your host of the backstory. And I'm joined today by three experts on water policy. Water conservation, water usage, water rights, which may be the biggest of all of the water related issues or knowledge that that's relevant to water today. And I'm going to introduce them as you see them on the screen. Jason is Longmont's water resources manager and can has been in these conversations before can welcome. We know that you're in the middle of all those, all those issues for us as a community. Jeff Drager is director of engineering for northern water. Thanks for joining us today. And the people will recognize people in Longmont will recognize the face of Derada maker our deputy deputy city manager. And with his fingerprints on all things public works and natural resources related in Longmont for for decades so thanks to all three of you I know you have a lot to do. And I know this is a big issue and you probably are immersed in these issues day in and day out so take a step back and educate the rest of us I think is real gift to the community. I know, for me, just in my role in the community the various conversations I find myself in the question about water, especially as people have heard about the declaration of a shortage on the on the Colorado and its implications for the lower Colorado basin states. That's triggered a number of questions for folks who about what that means. What does it mean for the upper Colorado what does it mean for Longmont. And so what we're going to do in this first segment or the first episode of a two part here is a kind of drill down on some of those issues with these experts. We're going to come back in a second episode and we'll to will record in a week or so. So you'll get answers to questions about what does it really mean to you or to us in Longmont both near term and long term. So we have water policy, water rights, water portfolio and then implications so just in on the issue of what's happening right what's happening lower Colorado upper Colorado. I'm going to defer to you guys, Jeff, are you the first one to pick this up is, or is it one of our Colorado or Longmont experts. I think I got the short straw. When I saw your questions, I think we passed this around to about three different people here trying to find someone who's going to answer these questions. And there is difficult times on the Colorado River now. As I said it's a hard subject our board hasn't made any real final decisions on this but I'll try and give you my personal opinion on what's going on here. You know the, you asked about the shortage on the Colorado River that was declared by the Bureau of Reclamation and as your listeners might know the Colorado River is really governed by the 1922 Colorado River compact and that compact, allocated water in the Colorado River between the lower basin states which are California, Arizona and Nevada, and they got about they got seven and a half million acre feet. It's implied that the upper basin would get seven and a half million acre feet, but the upper basin had a requirement to make sure that they delivered seven and a half million acre feet to the lower basin every year. So really our requirement in the upper basin is to deliver that downstream. So that's Colorado Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico or the upper basin states that have to do that so you know Colorado as being part of that is, is, is governed by this Colorado River it gets more complicated there are other agreements there's actually an upper Colorado River compact for the four upper basin states that has more rules about what happens in the upper basin states. And then there have been some other things that happened that are more related to the shortage in 2007, the seven basin states and the Bureau of Reclamation entered into the interim guidelines that would allow them to operate the Colorado River and it really talked about sharing water between Lake Powell and Lake Mead the two big storage reservoirs on the Colorado River. It had requirements in there for when water level in Lake Mead was low and it was high in Lake Powell. Lake Powell would deliver more water downstream. If it was the other way around and Lake Powell would reduce their diversions, but also in that document, kind of hidden in there that people didn't talk about much where these requirements for shortages so there was a requirement in the interim guidelines that said if water levels get below a certain point in Lake Mead, the lower basin states will be required to take a shortage. We hit those water levels this year, or at least we haven't actually hit those water levels, but the Bureau of Reclamation's computer models project that we will hit that water level next year. And so that based on those water model results, they have said that Arizona and Nevada will need to have shortage in their deliveries next year. That shortage got increased a little more a couple of years ago, as this drought has continued to drag on in the water levels have dropped. The upper and lower basin states also entered into what's called the drought contingency plan, and that plan actually increased the levels of shortage that were in those interim guidelines so it gets pretty complicated but in essence what happened here is the Bureau of Reclamation looks at water levels. This year is a very bad year. I think they think the inflows into Lake Powell are only about a third of normal. The Bureau of Reclamation runs their computer models they see very low water levels in Lake Mead next year, and that requires these shortages so, in essence, the shortages are declared by the Bureau of Reclamation and it's based on Lake Mead water levels and those agreements that I discussed so that is authorized to make that call. Yes, and then all the parties to the compact have to adapt to what those implications are. Right, it's different. I just I'll say real quickly, in the lower basin, those three states get their water delivered out of Lake Mead and the Bureau is essentially in charge of that and they make those deliveries and they do what happens. In the upper basin, it's a little bit different. We don't have reservoir above us to have the Bureau make deliveries out of. And so we have requirements in the compact, but really our water rights are allocated and authorized by the states themselves so here in Colorado, we're authorized by the states but we have commitments based on that compact. In the news reporting in the days following that declaration there have been a couple of newspaper articles. I think probably forecast, maybe it's speculating rather than forecasting on what the implications will be for certain members or populations in those lower states farmers residents. Those are commercial ventures if you're you know landscaping business or those kinds of things. What is what have you heard about what those implications might be for them because as we hear about those here in Longmont, you know people start to worry about, well what does that mean for me and I know we're going to get to that later. But what what will we be hearing just kind of to help people anticipate the kind of speculation. So what we're going to be hearing Nevada is probably pretty easy Nevada doesn't use their full allocation right now anyway. So even though they're required to take a shortage. They really won't be seeing any less water delivered to Nevada, but Arizona is going to see, maybe about half a million acre feet less water than their allocation on the Colorado River. And they've tried to figure out a way to make that work but in essence, they are going to reduce water deliveries mostly to agriculture. So they have different levels of agriculture Arizona has agriculture that's operated by the Indian tribes down there they have a regular other agriculture as well. They're going to see shorted just to agriculture they are going to move some water around they have ways to transfer water from the salt river project in Arizona into some of those farmers but in essence, you're going to see farmers take the biggest hit on those reduce water deliveries to Arizona. So that's the kind of hierarchy in terms of in terms of use or you know the first affected agriculture and then and then other other forms of industry I remember when growing up. When they're when Arizona, the Phoenix area where I grew up. All of the concerns about the salt river project and, and, you know, what that be sufficient for Arizona's water for the long term, and then that salt river or the Central Arizona project right that that ditch right that Carl Hayden when he was in the helped broker a deal on that still has a lot of water in it because I have my one of my brothers lives right next to it for it for that for a project like that the the the the the Central Arizona project. What will Arizonans you think see that kind of water flowing through that ditch. There will be water flowing through that ditch but it will be less than it has passed and most of that shortage is going to the Central Arizona project. And, you know, what's interesting about that project when to get that authorized they had to cut a deal with California to get their legislator to vote for the project. And that deal was that Arizona would be the first one to take shortages on the Colorado River in advance of California so that's why when you see these low water levels, Arizona is the first one that's that's there's the basis for it. You suppose anybody at those in those days ever anticipated what we're experiencing now. I don't know if they did or not I think they didn't and I think even, you know I mentioned these interim guidelines that came out in 2007 and those kind of came around after the 2002 drought. People said well we ought to think about what might happen if the water supply, you know, stays low like this, and they came up with these rules. But I don't think even then they expected it to get as bad as it has over the last 20 years I think they're surprised. And I think Arizona has always known that they were the first to take a shortage and they've always been very carefully, you know, keeping track of the rules and what's going on to make sure they get as much water as they can. So having grown up there there were there were lots of folks who wondered about all that that residential development around man made water features right around lakes and canals. It's like, how sustainable is that and I think they're having to answer that question probably now, all these decades later. So there's also the upper Colorado, right. Headwaters in the state of Colorado and, and there are then our implications for us based on in terms of what gets diverted how much gets diverted where it gets diverted how it gets measured all those kinds of things. Who wants to kind of pick up that storyline in terms of the upper basin states and Colorado in particular. I guess I can start you guys jump in if you want, you're being very quiet over there so you're welcome to jump in if you want. Yeah, you guys did draw that that long a straw you've got short straws to so you got to get into this. We, you know, in the in the upper basin. We don't have any shortage requirements or anything right now. And so, but you are seeing newspaper articles and you're hearing people with these perceptions, water users in the lower basin are saying hey we have to take shortages. You guys should take shortages in the upper basin so we're setting up this kind of negotiation that's that's going on right now. We don't have any requirements to take shortages now. We have to as I mentioned earlier we have to deliver 75 million acre feet every 10 years on a seven and a half million acre feet on it every year average for down to the lower basin, and we're well over that number. And so because we're well over that number were a few years away from actually having the compact tell us that we really need to, you know, we actually might need to have reduced deliveries or reduced water use. So there's, you know, from that perspective there's not a, there's not a likelihood in the next couple years anyway that that's going to happen. But there is pressure for people to start using less water and related to the shortage down in Lake Mead. You might have also seen another story that the Bureau of Reclamation required some releases out of some upper basin reservoirs so they they release some water out of flaming gorge, blue Mesa and Navajo reservoir that's going to go down to Lake Powell and try to increase the water levels in Lake Powell. And I think that number is, I had it written down here and it's 125,000 acre feet out of flaming gorge, 36,000 out of blue Mesa and 20,000 out of Navajo so the Bureau's already, you know, kind of really acting from that type of thing and saying we're going to start taking some actions in the upper basin, maybe to keep Lake Powell water levels high. There are concerns that if Lake Powell gets below a certain level. It's harder to generate power and I've also seen an article this week that power generation in Lake Powell will be lower than previous years. So those type of impacts are going to hit us right now. But we don't see, at least right now we don't see in the next few years, any legal requirement for the upper basin states to to cut their usage. There is a lot of discussion going on the states looking at things called demand management. Is there a way to, for the upper basin to reduce their demand to make sure they deliver that water downstream. You know there are a lot of discussions on going in that regard. If you, if you think about it a little bit. You know the lower basin gets their water delivered out of Lake Mead, and they get it every year, the Bureau delivers it to them every year. And in the upper basin, we take shortages all the time actually if, if, if your water rights on the same drain if the hydrology is low, you take a shortage, if we have a water right on the Colorado river, and there's not enough water in the river we take a shortage so we do take shortages all the time even right now. And I don't think people in the lower base and recognize that I really want to admit that that's going on. I think we are taking shortages and I think, ultimately, there is going to be a, you know, a stronger push to conserve more water be more efficient with water, and we'll see what happens if the, if the water supplies continue to be as low as they have the last few years, because of climate change or whatever else, you know we may then see some legal requirements for what might happen here. I think you bring up a really an excellent point on in particular Colorado versus the lower states and you'll probably remember when we were on that tour a year or two ago, where we toured down all the way down to the Imperial Valley in California. Frankly what I came away from on that tour I was struck by. The ease of which they were able to receive their water in any given year, and the certainty that they had to receive their water. As you mentioned they, they were less far less dependent upon mother nature or the hydrology in any given year as we are. And then secondly, I don't know about you but I was not really impressed with the level of conservation, or even the, the desire to conserve in some of those different users on the on the lower Colorado. The one that sticks with me and and I can't get out of my head was at the Imperial Valley, where, correct me if I'm wrong but I think they're using anywhere between two and a half to 3 million acre feet of water out of the Colorado every year. Yes, and, and I think that compares that is that about the same amount as the entire state of Colorado takes out of the Colorado or is it even more than what we take out. I mean that's a good point they'll our, our numbers right now is that we think Colorado takes about two and a half million acre all around a river. So we have one irrigation valley, the Imperial Valley granted it's a it's a large right irrigation district. Unfortunately, what I what I also observed was that one of the primary crops that they were growing down there was alfalfa. Yes, I do. And they were the growing grasses that they were then exporting to Japan or to China. Yes. If there's a need to conserve which I believe there is. And I believe we all have a duty to conserve down to each of our taps right each of us have that responsibility. It's pretty clear to me there's there's there's a lot of opportunity of conservation that can happen in those lower states. It really comes down to the will to do it, the desire to do it. And then of course the legal reasons to either do it or not do it. And it's all embroiled and tied up in these long term agreements that no one's willing to let go of right, and I'm hopeful, you know I tend to be an optimist that wise minded people will will look at the reality of what's happening on the ground and make some good decisions, such that we're not, not putting individual homeowners or people in into a needing to worry about whether or not they're going to have water at their tap. Anytime in the future, so. Go ahead, Ken. And I would like to follow up a little bit on both both Jeff and nails explanations there with just a little bit of data. One thing I think the viewers need to keep in mind. When you hear there is a lower base and shortage. It's not water shortage. It's now it's an allocation shortage. Basically in excess allocation over the last 10 year period, we have delivered out of like pal to the lower base and 92.5 million acre feet, which is an average of 9.25 million acre feet a year. In excess of the seven and a half or eight and a quarter if you include the US Mexican Treaty that is required to be delivered down there. So we have a situation where the lower states are in a situation of declaring a shortage when they've had, you know, 120% of water supply. And that's what we did in our minds up here. You know, a lot of our water up here is the Colorado big Thompson and when you get projects managed by the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, and we rarely have 100% you know, we we use, we have years where there's when it's tighter. There's less and so the water users in Colorado have learned over the years to manage their water better. And so they don't allocate every drop of water, every single year if it's there which does happen down below. But in perspective, the reason they're declaring a shortage, you know, Lake Mead and Lake Powell are both around 31 to 35% of storage capacity. When they've had over 100% delivery of water for every single year, as opposed to the upper base in which the CBT system which is managed by Northern water. It is currently as of today sitting at 80% capacity. After we just got done with our high peak usage summer period, we still got 80% capacity in storage. And that's, that's a much better managed system. So I think the upper basin. One thing I'd like to assure people around Longmont and around the northern Colorado is that we have really good water managers in Colorado. And that does help. Those two numbers I believe are very telling of how that management, why that management is so important. And that's a great, actually, the combination of what you just shared is a new perspective for me. And I feel like I'm probably paying more close retention that's been the average Joe not nearly as much as folks who are really dialed into water rights and all these issues but the of usage or the consumption versus the supply and the difference between managers who are as concerned about conservation as they are about supply versus just about delivery or over delivery. So, and with the focus on consumption that's a, that's a great way to frame and understand the difference. And we've all dealt with the same drought. Not everybody's managed the implications the same way. That's what I'm hearing. And who gets credit can for for the front range, the northern Colorado upper Colorado river basin who gets who gets who should we credit for that kind of management. I'd like to credit the water managers and the board like the northern board and councils, but really I think who gets credit are the average citizens. To use long as an example, our citizens have a real and personal water conservation ethic that has absolutely been shown in. When you look at the population growth and the versus the demand growth, which is much more than the population growth. It shows our citizens really do take conservation serious. It really helps. And then on top of that, you know you do have the managers of the systems, saying, Hey, when it's a, when it's a dry year, we're going to look really hard at water, we're going to provide the water we need but we're not going to provide excess water during wetter years. We need to keep it for dry years as opposed to, but I believe the lower basin just they overdraft every year, because they have the assurance we're sending them down. We got to send them down seven and a half million acre feet a year. They actually actually draft more than the compact and they have for decades. So we're going to drill down or get more focused on Longmont and what people ought to know what we all ought to be mindful of going forward. But since you brought it up, our water consumption on a per capita basis actually has gone down has it not year over year for several years. Give us just that kind of quick profile of what what a what a graph would look like in terms of water consumption on a per capita basis along one over the last say five years. Well, actually, probably the best example is, when we first said it's been about 15 years ago we first set a goal of having, you know, by by sort of build out of the city of 10% total water conservation savings. We started tracking that 15 years ago, and we've actually just recently met that goal and we're going to be looking at exceeding that goal and going on past that. But yeah, the per capita use probably the easiest way to put it in perspective is, we've been long months been using treated water around 18,000 acre feet a year, about 22 to 23,000 acre feet when you include raw water for parks and other uses. We've used about the same amount of water. Our current population was just close to 100,000 that we did 15 years ago, you know when we're around 75,000 so pretty impressive. It's very impressive what the citizens have responded to that request for conservation. All right, so let's let's just get a little more specific in terms of how water where water gets diverted where it gets diverted to in the in the upper Colorado Basin that that ends up with resident storage facilities like windy gap which we hear about and we'll talk more about in this series. Where does that water, where's that water get diverted how much of it gets diverted into into places like specifically when the gap. Let me jump on that real quick as Dale said earlier we using Colorado about two and a half million acre feet out of the Colorado River, about a million acre feet of that came after the 1922 compact was signed so one thing about that was the compact everything that was used before 1922 is not subject to being reduced by the compact so there's a million acre feet that we use in Colorado that subject to being reduced by Colorado River compact if something happened there. Half of that million acre feet are about a half million acre feet is diverted what we call Trans Mountain diversions it's diverted from the West slope to the East slope. It's diverted through the Colorado big Thompson when you got projects through the Adams tunnel that goes over into Estes Park, or and that's really about 250,000 acre feet really about half the Trans Mountain diversions are the water that we use in northern Colorado, and Youngmont gets a portion of that. The rest of it goes to Denver, and to Colorado Springs and Aurora essentially so. So you've got this water and most of that water, those Trans Mountain diversions are diverted high up in the, you know, in the near the continental divide, where it's feasible to drill a tunnel and get, you know, bring the water through to the other side. There are really old irrigation ditches from way back when that actually captured water on the West slope and went through a low spot in the topography and brought that water to the East slope. But there aren't very many of those and they're pretty small amount of water, most of that water comes through the big diversion projects and the big tunnels and so, you know, really about 250,000 acre feet comes through the Adams tunnel into northern Colorado that we serve through the CBT project. If you're familiar with our project we capture most of that water and Lake Granby, bring it through Grand Lake into Estes Park, down the hill and either goes north to horse tooth and gets fed to four Collins and other cities, or it goes south into Carter Lake and gets fed to Longmont Boulder and the people further south so that water is diverted out of Lake, out of Lake Granby and Grand Lake and brought through the tunnel and delivered to the whole front range and generally and this is a rough estimate but I can and Dale you can tell me but I think for most of the big cities it's maybe about half of your water comes from the, from the Colorado river and the other half is coming from your local native sources. And that's probably true for four Collins and Greeley and other cities as well. Some of the smaller towns may get more of their water actually from Colorado river and very little native supplies. Well that's probably a pretty good place to put a wrap on this conversation, because what it, first of all this it's kind of a, in the, in the midst of what is a very troubling weather, weather pattern right the drought, especially in the western United States that we've all heard so much about and they're dealing with and you see it in the, in the, in the, the rings right that we see so much of now in the news at Lake Mead and Powell etc. And maybe we'll come back and talk about how what condition blue Mesa, flaming Gorge and Navajo are you know in the next, in the next conversation, but in the midst of a troubling, you know weather pattern the bad news is if you're a Arizona you may be experiencing shortages the good news is that we've managed well and in northern Colorado and long monitors and other front range communities need not to be losing sleep right now about supply. And we'll, we'll pick up this story in the next segment, or the next episode when we when we start to talk about supply what exists and what's coming with with the chimney hollows firming project that's really focused on growing that and you talked about the number of acre feet that we consume in Longmont. When we get into the next conversation we'll talk about what Jimmy hollows adds to that total square footage or acre square acre feet in Longmont and what that means for both for our portfolio and the long term future of Longmont as we anticipate build out. You know our master plan gets us to 116,000 give or take a few. I've heard you fellas talk about will have sufficient supplies for more than that as as Longmont grows out if it were if it were to go beyond that estimate. So we'll get into that in the next episode thank you so much gentlemen for your your time today. What you do every day I'm much of it is without. It's not out there in public it's behind the scenes. It's in service to so many people, both on the, on the West slope and on the East slope. Everybody is indebted to you guys for the work you do. They just don't know it. So on their behalf, let me say thanks for what you do day in and day out on behalf of everybody in this state, especially in the front range. And I'm going to give you a chance to talk more about that. In our next episode Longmoners this is just the first half of the backstory on all things water related in Longmont next episode we're going to talk about storage usage future policy, and what that all means to us in the years ahead. Thank you gentlemen. I'm going to see in the next episode Longmoners. Stay tuned. Thanks. Thank you.