I chose to create a thematic focus of Hydraulic Colorado, for my usual Southwest Studies 272 Nature, Region, and Society of the Southwest course. Part of the motivation was to certainly force myself to explore more of the contrasts and parallels between Colorado and New Mexico water management, law, and allocation procedures. But given that it is a writing intensive class this year, I had to find a way to keep it "local" and manageable so that drafts could be developed without struggling to write on laptops and find WiFi on the road as we usually do.
Day trips were the solution. Some visits included a stop at the
Pueblo Reservoir, with the ever-helpful Colorado Springs Utilities folks (thanks Allison!) and their overview of the
Southern Delivery System, you can see the
outlet on the lower part of Pueblo Dam in the second photo, a new pipeline project to move CSU water rights out of the Arkansas River up to the Springs. It's a massive retro-fitting project, much like what we heard about in
Denver Water's headquarters, as they plan to expand the extant Gross Reservoir on the Fraser, and move more water for municipal needs. Context: cities use less than 2% of the water in Colorado. Photos from our visit here highlight some of these aspects.
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