By George Sibley
Thirty-five water-user groups from both sides of the Continental Divide recently concluded a “Colorado River Cooperative Agreement” concerning the waters of the Upper Colorado River – both the water still in that river’s tributaries in Grand, Summit and Eagle Counties, and the water diverted out of those rivers into the South Platte basin.
This situation lies a little to the north of Central Colorado, but it is nonetheless worth watching down here in Central Colorado as this agreement unfolds. “Central Colorado” is, after all, a region of the state fiendishly created by this magazine’s founders Ed and Martha Quillen to include headwaters on both the East and West Slopes. (Not to mention on Colorado’s “South Slope,” the Upper Rio Grande – technically East Slope but recently treated like the West Slope by the rest of the East Slope: a place to go for more water.)