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Now that the legislature has adjourned, I'm not sure whether to celebrate or mourn the demise of Senate Bill 232, which would have created the Front Range Water Conservation District in the fast-growing suburban zone between Denver and Colorado Springs.
It was sponsored by Sen. Jim Dyer of Littleton, who was a main mover behind last year's Referendum A. That would have allowed the state to issue up to $2 billion in bonds for water projects selected by the governor. It was defeated last November in every one of Colorado's 64 counties.
Dyer said SB 232 was his response to the defeat of Referendum A, and it's an understandable response. He's a state senator with a constituency to serve: the south metro suburbs. They're running out of water. Not just water for more development, but even for current residents.
Out here in the boondocks, the failure of SB 232 was generally celebrated and most newspapers opposed it; I got dozens of e-mails I got urging me to oppose it. But it did address a problem that is not going to go away, and it did so in a fiscally responsible manner.
The area in question -- the unincorporated portions of Arapahoe, Jefferson, Douglas, Elbert, and northern El Paso counties -- endures some of the fastest population growth in the United States. Those counties grew from about 650,000 people in 1970 to 1.9 million in the 2003 Census Bureau estimate. In 1970, they represented 29 percent of the state's population; in 2003, they were 41 percent. At that rate, those counties will hold a majority of Colorado's population by 2026.
Much of the growth gets water from wells that tap the Denver Basin, an underground formation of four aquifers. Water tables have been dropping at rates of up to 50 feet a year. Obviously, more water is coming out than is going in, and at some point, even after they've deepened their wells a couple of times, they're going to run out of water in the south metro suburbs. Some geologists predict this might occur within 25 years.
What happens after the wells go dry?
When silver prices collapsed in 1893, people just pulled
up stakes and left Leadville and Aspen. When the Great
Plains dried up in the 1930s, people abandoned their homes
and moved on. But it seems unlikely that nature and our
free market
would be allowed to take their courses
in an area that abounds in $300,000 houses.
Last year's Referendum A was an effort to save those housing investments. On the official website list of supporting individuals, groups and governmental agencies, the south metro area was heavily represented.
The plan was to get the whole state to pay to solve their water problems, through bonds issued by the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Little wonder that it failed.
Leaving things as they stand now won't get more water to the south suburbs. Their water supply comes from a hodgepodge of private wells, tiny water companies, small special districts -- none with the financial or political clout to build any substantive water project.
SB 233 would have produced an immense Front Range Water Conservation District, and it would have been big enough, and rich enough, to pursue some major water projects. It's no surprise that the bill was about as popular as scabies in rural Colorado -- which is where the water has to come from.
But I'm not sure we should be celebrating its demise, because under SB 233, the south suburbs would have paid for their own water development, rather than getting the entire state to bail them out with subsidized water projects that we would all be responsible for.
In other words, I will soon help pay for Salida's acquisition of a nearby ranch with some 1866 water rights -- a purchase I think was prudent. That's my water supply. Why should I also help pay for water for Parker or Franktown? Let them pay for their own, just as the rest of us do.
The Front Range Water Conservation District was a mechanism to allow them to pay their own way; if we wait and they keep building more houses, they'll go from 41 percent of Colorado's population to a majority, and they'll be in a position to make us all pay when their wells go dry.
If that district never forms, then what scheme will they come up with next? Will it be any improvement?
The southern metro suburbs always vote GOP and the residents may even believe the Republican Party line that individuals should be held responsible for the bad choices they make. In other words, don't expect help from the state if you get pregnant out of wedlock, or if you made the bad decision to work for a company that sends your job to Bangalore.
But those hard rules aren't for everybody. If you decide to buy a house supplied by a well that is predictably going dry, there are people who want the government to protect you from the consequences of that decision.
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