The looming crisis on the Colorado River, which supplies water to seven states and feeds the billion-dollar agricultural industries in California, Arizona and Colorado, is prompting Colorado lawmakers to ramp up their attention to water issues.

That includes converting what was once an interim committee that met only a few times a year to look at a limited number of issues to become year-round.

Under Senate Bill 10, sponsored by Senators Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, and Cleave Simpson, R-Alamosa, the interim water resources and agriculture committee is getting a new name and something of a new mission.

Simpson told the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee recently that the intent is to help lawmakers become better educated and engaged on water issues. 

Current law allows the water committee, as an interim body, to meet up to eight times a year, but in the last few years it’s frequently met no more than three times, usually in late summer and early fall. 

The bill would allow the committee’s chair to call meetings as needed throughout the year, and at a minimum of four times, Simpson said.

It could also expand the committee’s ability to visit each of the state’s eight major basins on a more regular basis, he added. However, the committee hasn’t made a field trip to any river basin since 2016. Its only field trips during the past seven years have been to the annual Colorado Water Congress summer conference in Steamboat Springs.

The committee’s last look at basin implementation plans was in 2014. Those plans dictate the projects each basin roundtable develops to protect agriculture, ensure municipal and industrial water supplies, and for the South Platte, the future of major storage projects. 

Basin roundtables have updated their implementation plans in 2015 and 2022. The committee has not looked at those plans since they were updated. It does receive an annual review of changes to the State water plan. 

The water committee sends to the General Assembly a half-dozen bills per year, including the 2022 measure that set aside $60 million for compact compliance for the Republican River and Rio Grande River basins. 

Attorney James Eklund, representing the Colorado Water Congress, spoke in favor of SB 10 in the Senate ag committee hearing. “We’re facing an unprecedented time of challenge and crisis,” he told the committee. Having the legislature engaged at this level sends a good message around the West, he added.

“I can’t highlight enough the importance of this conversation; the sense of urgency continues to grow as demands for water in this state increase and supplies decline. It’s important for us as a legislative body to be as informed as we can,” Simpson said.

SB 10 is one of two bills the committee sent to the General Assembly for 2023. The other, a House bill to form a task force on using snow for high-altitude water storage, was killed at the request of its sponsor on Jan. 23. The measure isn’t ready for prime-time, said Rep. Barbara McLachlan, D-Durango, partly due to the loss of the bill’s originator, Rep. Hugh McKean, R-Loveland, who died Oct. 30. 

Among the other bills discussed by the interim committee last year: a bill to ask the State engineer to give an annual presentation to the joint agriculture and natural resources committees on the nine interstate water compacts. The measure, which did not win full committee approval and hence was not submitted to the General Assembly, would give the state engineer an opportunity to decline if there were no significant updates.

However, any lawmaker can still introduce any bill drafted by the water committee that does not win full committee approval. 

The Senate ag committee gave SB 10 a unanimous vote on Jan. 26; it received another unanimous vote from the Senate on Feb. 1. It now heads to the House for its consideration.

A bill that will be heard by the House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee next Monday seeks to modernize the process for obtaining groundwater well information.

House Bill 1125 is sponsored by Reps. Megan Lukens, D-Steamboat Springs. and Ty Winter, R-Trinidad. 

Winter told this reporter that the bill originated in a discussion in the interim committee. It would remove the requirement that the owner of a groundwater well permit file any change in name or mailing address with the State engineer in person, by mail, or by fax. 

Instead, Winter explained, people in rural Colorado can file those changes via a form and submit it through email. It will save folks a trip to the post office, Winter explained.

The bill has a second purpose: to clean up language around well transactions. Currently, State law requires a buyer of a well to complete a change in owner name form before the transaction closes. HB 1125 removes the requirement that the form be submitted prior to the closing of the transaction. If the well has not been registered with the Division of Water resources, the buyer must submit that registration within 63 days of the closing. 

Winter said that provision is intended to make it clearer who owns certain wells. “If we ever get into an argument over water, we’ll know who has the senior water rights and who can lay a legitimate claim,” he said.

HB 1125 is scheduled for the House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee on Monday, Feb. 13.

A measure co-sponsored by Representative Richard Holtorf, R-Akron, that would allow high school students to learn CPR is moving through the Senate and is likely to be in the House this week.

Senate Bill 20 is co-sponsored by Sen. Janice Rich, R-Grand Junction. It won unanimous approval from the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 1 as well as unanimous support from the Senate on Feb. 6.

Under the bill, high schools that offer the State’s high school comprehensive health education program can incorporate CPR training into the curriculum. The bill, however, encourages all high schools, even those that do not offer the health education program, to include CPR training in their schools. 

The bill originally included instruction on how to use a defibrillator, but the education committee amended it to require that schools can tap into a list of training and education programs maintained by the newly-created Office of Cardiac Arrest Management within the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The Cardiac Arrest office is required to track the availability of education programs on how to use a defibrillator.