RMCO's Water Adaptation Programs

Much of RMCO's work has always focused on the interior West's greatest vulnerability to a changed climate -- the impacts of a hotter and drier climate on this region's already-scarce water resources -- and what can be done to meet the region's growing water needs in the face of that challenge.

Our Colorado Climate Project differed from efforts in other states to use a broadly representative stakeholder panel to address climate change in two ways. First, our effort was initiated and carried out by a private nonprofit group, not by a state government. Also, though, our effort focused heavily on adaptation -- in particular on water adaptation. With a broadly representative Water Adaptation Policy Work Group doing the initial work, our Climate Action Panel developed a comprehensive set of recommendations for actions to address climate change effects on Colorado water resources. Those recommendations amount to the first overall outline in any interior western state of how to go about addressing those effects and preparing to meet water needs in a different future.

Now, in the second (implementation) stage of our Colorado Climate Project, we are working through a Water Initiative Steering Committee to seek adoption of the water-adaptation recommendations of our blue-ribbon panel.

One success so far has been helping to bring about an initial state government report on climate change impacts on water supply, in partial fulfillment of one panel recommendation.

Through our Water Initiative, we also pulled together an impressive coalition of signers including the Colorado State Climatologist and officials of Colorado River Water Conservation District, Denver Water, Colorado Springs Utilities, and Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado, among others, who joined RMCO in submitting testimony to congressional appropriations committees in support of increased funding for key climate/water data collection systems. Strengthening those data systems to meet the state's and region's needs in a changed future was another panel recommendation. See the separate testimony to the House Apppropriations Committee's Interior and Agriculture subcommittees.

In our Water Initiative, we also are working to develop a consensus set of recommendations from the different organizations engaged in our initiative on the ways in which climate change is to be considered in a Colorado River Water Conservation Board study of future water availability in the Colorado River. The consideration of climate change in that study was one of the water-adaptation recommendations of our Climate Action Panel.

Among our other water efforts have been two of RMCO's four reports that focus heavily on the impacts of climate disruption on the interior West's water resources. The most recent of those reports is Hotter and Drier: The West's Changed Climate, a RMCO-Natural Resources Defense Council report, released in March 2008. See also a summary of that report, the news release announcing it, a copy of key figures from the report, and a PowerPoint slide of those figures. The figures and slide may be used freely, so long as credit is given. Our other report focused on water is Less Snow, Less Water: Climate Disruption in the West, a RMCO-Clear the Air report, released in September 2005. Our planned next report will focus exclusively on the Colorado River and the challenges for this region of the projected decline in its water.