State officials’ plan to manage river water hits impasse

The Denver Post reports that Gov. John Hickenlooper’s administration’s efforts to negotiate its Colorado Water Plan that includes trans-mountain projects such as the Yampa Pumpback, has reached an impasse.

The project would build a huge reservoir by Dinosaur National Monument and divert much of the Yampa River, then pump back 97 billion gallons a year through a 250-mile pipeline across the Continental Divide to Colorado’s increasingly thirsty Front Range.

This plan for the Yampa — one of the last free-flowing rivers in the overtapped Colorado River Basin — is designed to defray Colorado’s projected 2050 water shortfall of 163 billion gallons.

 

 

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