Filling The Gap: Front Range (2011)
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Filling The Gap: Arkansas Basin
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Ag/ Urban Cooperation
Filling the Gap Report
“ Unprecedented unknowns and uncertainties are ahead for Colorado's water resources. The Colorado Environmental Coalition, Trout Unlimited, and Western Resource Advocates are right. All the players in water decisions, from users to regulators, must think anew and create new procedures and laws to deal with these uncertainties. The days of traditional flow projections and 'heaven help the hindmost' mitigation plans are over! ”—George B. Beardsley
Denver Water Board Member 2004 to 2009, Municipal Water District Director, and Agricultural Irrigator
Municipal water supplies can be increased with financial benefit to the agricultural community through the use of systems integration and voluntary ag/urban sharing arrangements, like rotational land fallowing, interruptible supply agreements, and water leasing.
Ag/urban cooperation would likely require both additions to the physical infrastructure of existing supply systems in the South Platte Basin and agreements that protect the interests of parties who might wish to enter the cooperative arrangement. The MWSI estimated that there is as much as 495,000 acre-feet of agricultural water available upstream of Greeley for sharing with South Platte municipalities. Assuming the physical and administrative structures are put in place, we believe 25% of the 495,000 acre-feet could be shared with cities under innovative arrangements that do not require permanently drying irrigated acreage, thus producing approximately 120,000 acre-feet of new supply annually.
Figure 8: Estimate of Front Range Water Needs Including the Acceptable Planned Projects, Conservation, Reuse, and Ag/Urban Cooperation Strategies.
We assume 120,000 acre-feet of water could be made available annually through voluntary, cooperative ag/urban agreements without permanently drying irrigated lands. 
While the agricultural community may view the growing urban demand as a threat, it is also an opportunity. Water sharing arrangements can provide more stable incomes to agricultural users, and the opportunity for agricultural communities to generate a return on a resource that has a high and ever-increasing value in urban centers, while at the same time not losing control of the resource, could be beneficial.
Figure 9: South Platte tributary average annual native flows.
The majority of water available for ag to urban transfers lies north of the Denver metro area.
Geographically, the majority of available water supply for ag/urban sharing lies to the north of the Denver metro area. Native flows of the major tributaries to the South Platte between Denver and Greeley average almost 700,000 acre-feet per year. Not all of this water is used by agriculture, but a substantial portion is, and some fraction could be made available for cooperative agreements between cities and irrigators. 