Colorado’s lawmakers want to consider the viability of turning water into snow at high altitudes as a way to store the precious resource. 

They also want to focus on water year-round.

The Interim Water Resources and Agricultural Review Committee, which wrapped up its summer work on Sept. 22, voted to send the two measures to the General Assembly, which is set begin meeting on Monday, Jan. 9. The earlier date is to allow the General Assembly to certify the results of the 2022 election before the governor is sworn in, likely to take place the following day, Jan. 10.

“This is intended to be a conversation,” Minority Leader Hugh McKean, R-Loveland, said on the snowmaking bill, “Is there a financial or logistical way to increase high-altitude storage?”

The measure would create a seven-member task force with a June 1, 2024 deadline for reporting back its findings on the possibility of using snow in high-altitude storage. The task force would include one member each from the state House and Senate, along with representatives from the ski and whitewater rafting industries, the state engineer, an engineer with experience in high-altitude hydrology, and someone from the U.S. Forest Service. 

The task force will look at the relationship between boosting snowmaking and increased water storage, whether snowmaking represent “meaningful storage;” benefits of small-scale storage ponds or tanks, compared to large reservoirs; and, a time-benefit analysis that would look at costs and a timeline for increased snowmaking and construction of a reservoir to handle the snow.

The bill won unanimous committee approval, and McLachlan, Sen. Cleave Simpson, R-Alamosa, Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village will be its prime co-sponsors.

And while water has long been an important topic for Colorado’s General Assembly, it’s never risen to the level of a standalone, permanent committee, such as the appropriations or education panels.

That could change under a bill that also won the committee’s approval.

Currently, water is among the topics considered primarily by the House and Senate agriculture committees. 

Under the measure, it would become a year-round permanent committee, meeting at least four times a year with unlimited field trips. The committee currently crams its work into little more than two months during the summer, but Simpson noted the “sense of urgency, approaching emergency status” on water.

“You think about the challenges of Nebraska on the South Platte,” Simpson said, citing the declining reservoirs on the Colorado River system or the federal government’s plans for the Rio Grande River. “I felt like this committee should have the ability to meet throughout the year.”

Simpson will be measure’s lead sponsor, joined by Bridges. In the House, Rep. Barbara McLachlan and McKean will sponsor the bill. 

What failed to get the committee’s approval was a bill that would have put more teeth into previous law regarding xeriscaping – landscaping that eliminates or reduces irrigation – in HOA communities.

Current law says HOAs cannot prohibit xeriscaping, non-vegetative turf grass, or drought-tolerant vegetative landscapes on property for which a unit owner is responsible. A caveat exists: HOAs can enforce design or aesthetic guidelines or rules that apply to xeriscaping, or regulate the type, number and placement of drought-tolerant plants on a unit owner’s property. The bill scrubbed by its sponsor would have broadened the law to allow a unit owner or tenant an option that consists of 80% drought-tolerant plants.

The bill’s proponent, Chair Rep. Karen McCormick, D-Boulder, pulled the bill but said she plans to work on it for the 2023 session.

A bill to set up an annual presentation from the state engineer to the General Assembly on interstate compacts was also pulled by Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail. Committee members, however, are open to finding a way to move the issue forward. The bill would require the state engineer to update the legislature annually, beginning in 2024, on the state’s nine interstate water compacts, including how the state is complying with those compacts and other any water management issues that may arise.