Water, Policy, and the Systems We Depend On

Water is one of the most critical and complex policy issues in Colorado, yet most people rarely think about how it actually works. In this episode, Ross Izard sits down with Casey Davenhill of the Colorado Watershed Assembly to break down the systems, history, and policies that govern how water is managed across the state.

From the Dust Bowl to today’s drought concerns, the conversation explores how Colorado built a legal and collaborative framework around water, why watersheds shape decision-making, and how competing interests from agriculture to cities to recreation all intersect in one shared system.Because when it comes to water, everything is connected, and understanding that system is the first step to protecting it.

What we cover:
 • What a watershed is and why it matters
 • How Colorado’s water system developed over time
 • The concept of “first in time, first in right” water law
 • Why water policy is so complex and stakeholder-driven
 • How organizations collaborate across regions and interests
 • The role of the Watershed Assembly and the Healthy Rivers Fund

About the guest:
Casey Davenhill is the Executive Director of the Colorado Watershed Assembly, a statewide nonprofit that supports and connects watershed groups across Colorado. Her work focuses on collaboration, funding, and on-the-ground efforts to improve water quality, conservation, and long-term watershed health.

Resources:
 • Colorado Watershed Assembly: https://www.coloradowater.org/
 • Colorado Water Conservation Board: https://engagecwcb.org/
 • The Colorado River: https://coloradoriver.com/
 • South Platte Basin Roundtable: https://cwcb.colorado.gov/about-us/basin-roundtables/south-platte-basin-roundtable

Leave a review and stay in touch:
If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review the show. It helps more listeners find us. Have feedback or questions? Reach out to the team at straightup30@xiphosstrategies.com

Straight facts. Straight talk. Straight to the point.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the straight up 30 where we make policy makes sense in 30 minutes or less. I'm your host, Ross Izzard, and today we are here to talk about water, which, if you're paying any attention to the news and what's going on in Colorado, you know that we are in a pretty dire situation when it comes to water. But honestly, the conversation about water and water policy and water conservation predates all of that by many, many decades. And there is a ton of stuff going on in this world that I think a lot of folks just don't know about. And so to help us understand the water world a little bit better, we have Casey Davenhill from the Colorado Watershed Assembly. Full disclosure, I do sit on the Watershed Assembly board, so I get a first-hand view of the work that the organization is doing, which is awesome. And I'm really excited to have Casey here with us to talk all things water. So thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Absolutely. Happy to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

I wonder if you could start by giving us an overview of the Watershed Assembly itself and your role there as the executive director. What's your day-to-day look like?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Oh, it's rarely the same, but um the Colorado Watershed Assembly is a statewide nonprofit. Um, it was formed in 2002, um, about the time that uh the Clean Water Act was was just being enacted. Um, a number of local watershed organizations were being formed throughout the state of Colorado, and the Watershed Assembly was created to provide sort of a meeting space or an umbrella organization to leverage the work of the individual watershed groups to identify shared goals, um, to promote funding, um, to to encourage local investment in watershed organizations. Um, but actually the um the conservation movement began back in the 1930s. You've heard of the Dust Bowl, um, the 1930s, often called the Dirty 30s. It was the largest man-made disaster that this country has ever experienced. We were losing millions of tons of topsoil here in Colorado. Um, south southeastern Colorado was the epicenter of the Dust Bowl. Um the conservation movement started. The the goal was to create conservation districts throughout the West where local landowners could come together, um, learn from each other, again, leverage resources, promote the availability of funding, um, identify best management practices. How are we going to get out of this mess? And so the whole, those conservation districts are also aligned on a on a watershed basis. And um, for for those of you who aren't familiar with that term, a watershed is the area of land that drains into a specific body of water. Right now we're in Denver, we're sitting in the South Platte watershed. Um, on the eastern slope, we have the South Platte in Arkansas and the Republican River watersheds. And on the west slope, the the big the big one is the Colorado River watershed, uh, but there are also several other sub watersheds. So it's the land that drains into a specific river.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

And I think some people don't have a super queer picture of of how a watershed works or why it's so important that this is organized around watersheds, because you know, we're a headwater state, which means that the rivers start here in most cases. They're actually coming from snow on the mountains. You can go all the way up to where the river originates, and then they flow all the way out of here and feed through all of these different river systems, states downstream, everybody here in Colorado. I mean, it's a very important, but also a very complex universe. And I spend a lot of my life in rivers when I'm not doing politics, I'm probably out fly fishing. And so you really kind of get a really clear picture of how much is going on in these watersheds. But until this happened, the water politics world and the conservation world wasn't really organized in a way that made sense. It was organized by counties, it was sort of a whole bunch of different local governments that are touching it, and there wasn't really a huge, I guess, conceptualization of what a watershed was. And so that's that's kind of a sea change in how we even think about water.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Well, John Wesley Powell was one of the first explorers in this area. He he urged the folks back east not to create square little political boundaries. It looks great, it makes a great place, Matt. Um, but his his advice was to arrange the Western states along watershed boundaries. Um it's it's it's hard to imagine um where we would be and what the conversations would be like if that had happened. Um but I will say that today that realization of what a great idea John Wesley Powell had is is sinking in. And it's creating opportunities for folks to cooperate across political jurisdictional boundaries, county boundaries, um, even state boundaries in some cases. It's not always easy, but but what Ross and I get to work with, um, or who we get to work with, are the people who are really, you know, putting in the effort to create those relationships that uh recognize that watersheds are water winds and watersheds are uh uh different, you know, they're they're not they don't coincide with state boundaries.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

No, it turns out that nature doesn't really care all that much about the lines that we draw on a map, right? So, but even with reorganizing it, because that's a huge thing to reorganize around what nature is doing in the form of watersheds and to be able to really think carefully about conservation in that space, which to be honest, you probably couldn't if you didn't think about it that way, because those watersheds are so deeply connected inside those systems, it would be very hard to have meaningful conservation conversations if you're really only dealing with snapshots of an individual system. Right. But it's still complicated, right? And so when I started working with the Watershed Assembly, I thought, I thought I knew a couple things, you know, because like I'm out there fishing, I'm spending time in this universe, I work on it politically. Uh, and then I started talking to you and I started talking to the folks at the Watershed Assembly, and I realized that there is uh layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of depth and stakeholders and organizations and government and politics and history in this space. So even though we've kind of at this point reorganized in a more sensible fashion, that doesn't really mean it's easy.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

It's absolutely not easy because we're talking about human beings and about um differing values and um different economies, um different priorities. Uh so for for an example, um in again in around 2000 or the early 2000s, um we were entering into a significant drought, um kind of similar to what we're staring at right now. Um and the the there were several individuals in state government at the time that knew that we could not afford to have an east slope, west slope battle. Um the we have 90% of the population in Colorado lives on the east slope. Um 20% of the water falls on the east slope. So on the west slope, population is much less much less dense. They get 80% of the precipitation. So the way that that balance was um managed 100 years ago was through transmountain diversions, where water was um water from the upper Colorado River was sent over to the east slope through tunnels, um, and there are several of them. Um Northern Water has the Colorado Big Thompson project. Denver Water was another organization that you know really had the foresight to look ahead and understand that we were going to need that, you know, we were gonna need more water for the population to grow. And so those trans mountain diversions were created. And um the last drought that went around the the West Slope folks were objecting to the idea that there could be any more trans mountain diversions. There were some who thought, you know, well, we need more water and they've got it on the west slope, so let's go get some, but that became politically almost impossible. When you talk about complicated, that was really complicated. And so the the state legislature created um the round tables. The round tables are um, it's a convening um body, it's an opportunity for for folks living in the South Platte Basin to come together, for folks living in the Gunnison Basin to come together. So the round table membership is defined around watersheds. So at least in the state of Colorado, there is a mechanism that brings the interests of the different watersheds together. The idea being that if it can be a collaborative exercise, that those different round tables can, their leadership can also come together statewide and compare the challenges and opportunities and better understand the challenges and opportunities that folks over in southwestern Colorado are dealing with, um, that folks out in the Republican River Basin are dealing with. So this round table mechanism is really important.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, I mean, you have to have a mechanism like that because water, water is such an interesting issue because you have, on the one hand, this sort of, I mean, not to be overly dramatic, but I guess it is kind of dramatic, civilization level concern with we have to have water, right? I mean, we we can't live here, especially. Right. I mean, it's gonna it's gonna be hard, right? So you've got this massive macro level concern, and then you have all these micro-level interests, right? So you have agriculture who obviously need water to irrigate their fields, you have individual landowners, you have sportsmen, you have recreation, you have local governments, you have mining and industry, and everybody is using water at different points in the system. They all are coming at it from various different perspectives. A lot of them have different incentives, a lot of them have different goals, if we're being honest about what they're hoping to do. And yet, because those systems are interconnected, whatever one guy does upstream is going to affect the next guy downstream. And trying to sort all that stuff out in the absence of a mechanism where people can sit down and actually have the conversation would be impossible and might lead to some really nasty fighting, which it still does sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Well, and and again, um, to go back to the early 1900s, Ross, what you're talking about was very much exactly what was happening. Um, that people were leapfrogging, uh, one farm would would put in some ditches and start pulling water, for instance, from the South Platte River. Um, another another settler would come um and make camp upstream, um, set out his farm and his canal system and his irrigation, and all of a sudden the guy down below was wondering what happened to my water. And it was deadly serious. And because it is a matter of life and death to be able to have water and to be able to eat, frankly, um produce produce our food. And and that was when um I'm gonna refer to a couple of things I pulled from the glossary of water terminology, and there is one, and I encourage you to take a look at it.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Which is what you know something's complicated when it has its own glossary, right? That's not a good sign.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

So CSU fact sheet number 4.717. Um, quick facts. Water in Colorado is ministered under the doctrine of prior appropriation or first in time, first in right. That's really important in Colorado. It is unique and not understood by a lot of people who move here from elsewhere, especially a lot of people who come from water-rich states. They can't imagine that you can't just go stick your hose in the river and grab some water and take what you want. You cannot do that in Colorado. The legal system has been set up specifically to avoid that and to establish legal rights. Um, the state constitution declares that the right to divert the unappropriated waters of any natural stream to benefit to beneficial uses shall never be denied. So there is a right to use unappropriated water, and and people who can prove that they have a beneficial use, it's in the Constitution. They have the right to do that. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

And appropriated water means water that has not been claimed or is being used for something else.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Right. So back in the day, there was unappropriated water. We are now living in a time where there's, to my knowledge, no such thing as unappropriated water.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Which is kind of great. If you think about how much water is in the state, there is none of that left that is not appropriated anymore.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Right. In fact, there are some people who have water rights who actually don't get to use their water because they are junior to those who came first and filed their water rights before them. So it is a system, um, it is a legal structure. In Colorado, we have a water court. Um, we have justices who sit on that water court. We have a lot of water lawyers because this is a potentially contentious and complicated arena.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

And it turns out lawyers love.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

And money.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

That's right. I mean, you get paid to have a forever fighting. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

What a great combo. Um I'm just gonna add two more things. Um, that the concept of beneficial use that I that I referred to earlier, um, that's something that's a little bit subject to interpretation. It can change over time. It changes with changing public values, but it does include this notion that it's wise use, it's not for speculative purposes, and it's um use it without wasting it.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Right. As defined by the water court, I assume eventually, or who gets to decide that?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

It would most I mean, if it got to that, it would be litigated in water court.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Right. Back to the lawyers. So, okay, I mean, it's a tremendously complicated space, it's a tremendously complicated issue as the population of the state gets bigger and society gets more complicated, right? We just had an episode not too long ago about the uh expansion and growth in data centers, which obviously has major implications for water. And so you have population growing, you have technology growing, you have ever more demand on the resource, and the politics are complicated and kind of vicious a lot of the time. Where does the watershed assembly sit in that mix? So, how do you what's your contribution to helping this stuff move forward or find common ground enough that we can maybe come up with an outcome that works?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Well, we absolutely agree in um civil discussion of differences. We like to think of ourselves as the um a neutral convening space. Um we we do offer services to um to organizations that are um forming themselves. The issue might be water quality. It might be um the the water providers and the wastewater treatment plant operators, concern about regulation, um, how can they work together with the Department of Public Health and Employment and make sure that regulations are practical and affordable. So those kind of groups, we help them come together, we help them operate and and and do the work that they are set out to do rather than have them form another 501c3 where their their passions would really be diminished because they'd be diverted to some, you know, filing tax returns and voting for presidents and things like that. So we do help organizations uh to convene around a subject matter topic, um, and so we facilitate that. We host an annual conference in early October every year at Avon, where we invite policy experts, um, folks who work on the ground doing um stream reclamation projects, um, fish passages in irrigation systems are an example, but uh it's it's everything. It's um low-tech process-based restoration, which is basically beaver mimicry up in the up in the upper watersheds, um, to uh protecting streams in urban areas that are impacted just by the development and the increase of hard surfaces and the increase of water flows and the increase of erosion. So we have some beautiful um rivers and and and streams in the metropolitan area that look natural, but actually they are highly engineered. Um, and and there that was very purposeful because of the community value. We love outside. We love our creeks and streams.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah, so I'm sort of watching this uh situation develop um as a both as somebody who's engaged in it politically and as a sportsman who's out there quite a bit. Uh and it's kind of it's starting to get sort of wild. So I read an article just the other day that they're going to completely drain Antero Reservoir and send all of that water down to Cheesman Reservoir, and then it's just going to be dry, which is wild to me because Antero is huge and something that I very often put a kayak on and go to. And we're starting to see all of these sort of uh water restrictions, management restrictions, changes in how these various local water entities, Denver Water being a good example, are managing these streams. And I think, you know, a lot of folks sort of have a sense that it's it's not great. We're looking at incredibly low snowpack. We know it's gonna be a rough year, but what happens now? I mean, if you're looking at this situation and you're thinking about we already have this complicated political situation and all of this stuff going on at the table, and now we're gonna throw in what looks like it might be a pretty serious drought situation. What are your predictions for sort of how that plays out over the next year and where do you think the Watershed Assembly would be helpful there?

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Oh, predictions. I don't know that that's in my job description, Ross.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Um no crystal ball, really?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

No, no. I mean, I I guess what I what I would say to that is we've got some incredible people working in water in Colorado, um, whether it's the Colorado, um the Upper Colorado River District um leadership that is in negotiations with the upper and lower basin states, i.e. Arizona, California, Nevada.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Um, by the way, if you haven't paid attention to this, you should go look up the Colorado River Agreement or the Colorado River Compact, which is this hundred-year-old agreement that governs how the water in the Colorado River gets divvied up, not just in Colorado, but with all these states, and actually then eventually with Mexico. And it is a massive political undertaking to even talk about that. You have all these states with all these interests, you have the federal government, you've got this international interest, and it all starts right here in Colorado. So if you're not watching that and you have an interest in water, that's a good place to start.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Um go to the library, check out some history of water in Colorado. Um, there were some incredibly uh thoughtful people working in to basically create the quality of life that we have in Colorado today. Um, a hundred years ago, at the turn of the last century, um, incredible thinkers with a lot of political savvy and a really big picture view created a framework that is a legal framework. Um, and we are a country of laws, and so it is comforting to know that we have a legal framework that is flexible enough to accommodate changes like you know, what we're seeing droughts, um severe droughts, long term droughts. Um that's where my hope comes from. Um in engaging um with the Colorado Water. Conservation Board. That's where a lot of the conversation is happening. They have a website, engagecwcb.org. Tons of information there that is, you know, current and up to the date. But of course, knowing history is really important to create context for that. There's another website that is wonderful talking about the big picture multi-state connections that we have through the Colorado River, and that is ColoradoRiver.com. So ColoradoRiver.com, that's important. There's lots of organizations who call themselves Colorado River things, but ColoradoRiver.com is going to get you the information that's really timely and topical.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

And you will not be bored looking into that, I promise. No. So one of the things that the Watershed Assembly does is administer sort of a grant program through the Healthy Rivers Fund. And I know that that makes a lot of difference, not just as far as the organization convening folks to have conversations, but then also getting out there and directly supporting a bunch of really cool work out there. The folks are coming with applications all the time. I just got to review a round of applications for some really incredible stuff. And I wonder if you could talk a bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

You bet. We are so proud of the Healthy Rivers Fund. When you talk about local engagement, all of these organizations throughout the state of Colorado, probably 90 watershed groups, another 75 conservation districts, they live, they they live with their waterway on a daily basis. Those are the folks who understand it the most, who are most invested in protecting the values that they share. And the Healthy Rivers Fund is a mechanism. It's funded in part by an income tax checkoff program. So when you're filing your taxes, if you have a refund, you can designate some of that to go to the Healthy Rivers Fund. The Healthy Rivers Fund is pretty well known in Colorado. We get many, it's quite a competitive application process. We are able to fund somewhere in the range of 10 to 12 projects every year that let local organizations start to start the process of building long-term resiliency in their watersheds. The Healthy Rivers Fund is great because it's fairly flexible. The money can be used for the planning that's often necessary to have in place before you can then go get project funding, or you build a reputation and you identify the projects that need that need assistance that need to be built or need to be funded. And then you can go to an appropriate agency to get the larger dollar amounts. And it's also a way to kind of get your feet wet in the grant and contract process. So we feel the Healthy Rivers Fund is a is a terrific benefit for local communities. And another the thing that makes it absolutely unique and that I love about it is that very rarely do you hear people talk about water quality and water quantity in the same room. They are separate agencies, one's in Glendale, one's in downtown Denver. So the Health Department and the Water Quality Control Commission deal with water quality. They also review the applications that come in from the Healthy Rivers Fund applicants, as does the Colorado Water Conservation Board. So it really gives us the unique opportunity to have the water quality people and the water quantity people looking at projects and making those connections. And again, we feel that's very much to the benefit of local communities.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

And that's sort of an interesting microcosm of the complexity of the whole space, right? Which is that we're talking about the same water, but different government agencies are in charge of quality, meaning how clean is it and can we use it for the things we'd like to use it for, like drinking or other stuff. And then you have the people who are interested in water quantity, how much water is actually coming through, stream flow, throughput, all of that stuff. And they don't actually talk to each other a lot. And I think that's one of the things that folks don't understand about this world in particular is that there are a lot of government agencies involved, there are a lot of nonprofits involved, there are a lot of local governments involved. But if it weren't for organizations that were deliberately making that come together and programs like the Healthy Rivers Fund that are forcing sort of a uh more holistic view of the space, they wouldn't really be talking to each other. And if anybody is interested in sort of the future of water in Colorado, which I bet you should be, since you're a human and you need as much of it as you can probably get, that's an interesting thing to think about. And so if somebody really wanted to get involved in this, if they want to be part of the discussion, if they wanted to sort of help bridge that gap, where could they start besides the resources that you mentioned earlier? And if they wanted to support to support the work that the Watershed Assembly is doing, where would they go to do that?

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Sure. Well, I think there's a couple of ways that you could approach it. Um, one would be know your watershed. And, you know, I mentioned that we are in the South Platte watershed here, but within that, there's also the Clear Creek, Cherry Creek, Bear Creek, um, Sand Creek. I mean, there are many, many different um water bodies that are tributaries to the South Platte River. A really great way to get engaged is to identify your closest local watershed organization. They're mostly educationally focused. A lot of times it is education by getting out there and getting in the creek or um picking up trash. We had a trash day yesterday on Cherry Creek, um, or it's planting trees, or it's um it's managing vegetation. So that's a really fun way to get your hands dirty, I guess, um in this realm. If you I mean it depends on how you like to learn. People learn in different ways. Um, there are many websites, I mentioned, um, ColoradoRiver.com and engagecwcb.org. Um, there's the round table process. We have some um very interesting information at Southplatbasin.com that is specific to the to the South Platte Roundtable work. Um, the Colorado Watershed Assembly has a newsletter. It's called the Inflow. Um you can you can sign up for that, it's free. We don't bug you, we don't solicit funding for that. We just feel it's an important service, and our board of directors feels that that's an important service, and so we find we find the funding to make that inflow happen. The events will be posted there, um, funding opportunities are posted, educational opportunities, and we have a job um board as well. So the inflow's a pretty popular place. Um people like to tune into that.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Yeah, it's a great place to start. And I'm sure they wouldn't say no to a donation if you were so inclined. This is true. This is true. Casey, thanks so much for joining us. This is fascinating stuff. I think at some point it would be good to take a deeper dive into one of these particular issues. But in the meantime, it was awesome having you on the show.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Hey, thank you so much, Ross, for this opportunity. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

That'll do it for this week's episode of the Straight Up 30. We'll see you back here next week for another policy issue that matters.