Groundwater Workshop Set Sept. 27-28: Increasing Water Demand Has Made Aquifer Management a Critical Issue.

By The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

Sep. 9–A workshop later this month will look at issues surrounding groundwater management policy in Colorado.

Shortages of groundwater in the heavily developed Denver Basin, new efforts to use aquifers for storage, recharging depleted aquifers and legal or policy constraints to groundwater development are all issues that have made headlines in recent years.

The workshop is scheduled Sept. 27-28 at the Doubletree Hotel in Colorado Springs. Speakers include U.S. Department of Natural Resources Director Harris Sherman, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs and key Colorado lawmakers. Academic, legal and technical experts are also expected.

The workshop is sponsored by the El Paso County Water Authority, Colorado Springs Utilities, Brown and Caldwell, Aqua Engineering, Western Resource Advocates and R.W. Beck. The need for the conference grew out of an Arkansas Basin Roundtable committee meeting on groundwater issues.

“Droughts and increasing demands are stressing Colorado’s water resources,” said Mary Lou Smith, vice president of Aqua Engineering. “Can storing surplus surface water underground and then pumping it up later be part of the solution to our statewide water supply dilemma?”

The solution is technically possible, but the policy questions complicate the issue, she said.

Roadblocks all have to do with water law, availability of recharge water and allocation policy.

“How do you keep track of what happens to the water you have stored underground, so you know how much you can legally take back out?” Smith asked, citing some of the tough questions surrounding aquifer recharge or storage. “What kind of surface water will Colorado law let you store in this manner? Can it be water leased from agriculture? Is it acceptable to use water after it has been through a city’s wastewater treatment plant? Can we use water remaining after mining operations?”

The Arkansas Basin Roundtable is one of the nine stakeholder groups set up by the state Legislature in 2005 to start looking at how to solve water issues river basin by river basin n and then to help basins cooperate with one another to enact those solutions.

The roundtable saw a need to look at the state’s aquifer recharge policy, especially since a significant portion of their urban population drinks and waters their lawns with groundwater, Smith said.

The basin roundtable voted to use some of their allocation of state funds from the Water Supply Reserve Account to put on the conference.

To register, call Smith at 970-229-9668 or e-mail mlsmith@aquaengr.com.

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