Recent Articles from Bart Taylor
Salazar’s water future
Well-versed in Colorado water issues before he left for Washington, Ken Salazar's post at Interior could not have exposed him more to regional water challenges, including the plight of the Colorado River and its Basin stakeholders. His agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, just completed the seminal...
Sequester deal in sight?
President Obama’s last offer offer to Speaker Boehner called for a dollar-for-dollar deal - $1.3 trillion in cuts for about the same in new revenues, $1.26 trillion - the ‘grand bargain’-type agreement the White House sought. While not as fundamentally game-changing as Simpson-Bowles, this final s...
Flaming Gorge lives
Yesterday, the Basin Roundtable Project Exploration Committee – the Flaming Gorge task force – released the results of its year-long evaluation of a proposed 500-mile pipeline to deliver water from western Wyoming to Colorado’s Front Range. The Colorado Water Conservation Board funded the study to...
Energy investors gain with cliff deal
If you were like me, you were surprised to learn that the fiscal-cliff deal, the most contentious of legislative battles, included in the end a package of energy tax provisions that on their own have been at the center of legislative discord for years. But there they were, a package of a dozen or...
Water study reaction: Predictable — and self-serving
Much of the initial reaction to last week’s release of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River study had been heard before, owing to a prior release of data. Headlines focused on the study’s earlier forecast of a 3.2 million acre-feet shortfall throughout the Colorado River Basin in the coming decades, and prepared remarks from water […]
Dissonance at Flaming Gorge
In January, the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) will release the findings of its Flaming Gorge pipeline task force, convened early this year to study a project that’s divided the water community throughout the Colorado River Basin. Supported by users in Colorado with an acute need for wa...
Will the Bureau’s Colorado River study live up to the hype?
One measure of the high anxiety around water in the West is the hyper-interest in the Nov. 30 release of the final phase of Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River study. This phase promises to be the most interesting, approachable part of the study, focusing on a long list of proposals submitted b...
When energy needs and water supply collide
Have water planners in the Colorado River Basin states anticipated a winter with as much anxiety as 2012-13? It would be hard to imagine. As sanguine as they’ve been this beautiful Western fall about the forthcoming snow pack, hope gives way to expectations in November. In Colorado, a foot of week...
TopCo leaders optimistic and hiring
Business leaders attending the ColoradoBiz/UMB Financial Top Company awards retreat in Napa, Calif., lamented a lack of qualified workers to fill openings but expressed “cautious optimism” in discussing Colorado’s economic prospects in 2013. Executives from 11 Top Company winners attended the annual event. Against a backdrop of improving national economic news including gains in home [&h[...]
Water-related “carrying capacity:” An idea whose time has come?
Last week, the Colorado Water Conservation Board hosted a conference to discuss the impacts of drought and how water providers can adapt to meet demand in light of diminishing supplies. It's not an easy chore. Drought is stressing an already nervous water ecosystem. The conference was another exam...
Sterling Ranch ruling highlights Front Range water issues
Colorado's business community was reminded again last week that water threatens the region's economic prospects. District Court Judge Paul King ruled that the Sterling Ranch development in Douglas County had not lined up a sufficient long-term supply pursuant to a 2008 statute requiring “a water s...
Search for consensus elusive in Colorado River Basin
The tale of the Colorado River has become tangled in part because of its evolution into two distinct water realities, that of the Upper and Lower River Basins. One operates in a deficit relative to its annual water allocation, the other a surplus. Arizona, Nevada and California are managing the ri...