Colorado’s Water Plan is nearing completion, with a second draft now in circulation for comment. The revised plan contains what the first edition lacked: an articulated action plan that combines increased efficiencies – both in the regulatory process and in water use – with increased storage, innovative sharing strategies and conservation measures throughout the state’s water systems and their varied uses.

Each of these steps has the potential to address what the state projects will be a growing gap between water demand and the sources that meet the need – a geographical, political and climate-driven challenge. In the next phase of the plan, which will be final in December, the state must prioritize these varied solutions and establish a concrete timeline for implementing them, as well as find the money to do so. This step will require as much or more work than the significant toil that has been done to date.

The plan’s overall aim is to address a clear and growing problem: 70 percent of Colorado’s surface water originates on the Western Slope, where just 11 percent of the state’s population lives. Conversely, 70 percent of the state’s water is used east of the Continental Divide. This gap is widened by the fact that much of Colorado’s water is allotted to agricultural use, though there is growing demand to transfer it to municipal and industrial uses. The challenge is compounded by climate change projections that will further pinch water supply across all sectors. The solution is complex, comprehensive and multifaceted, and while the plan articulates a much-needed mindset shift steeped in collaboration across the river basins and their individual political and cultural circumstances with respect to water, it does not establish a step-by-step solution to the problem. Instead, it sets the stage for further discussions and action.

First among these is the funding conundrum. The plan identifies the need to assess, streamline and expand the funding options for developing, conserving and managing the state’s water resources and this is the appropriate place to start. While there are many options for efficiency, conservation and improved systems across the water-consuming sectors, implementing them will require money. The first step, which the plan identifies, is to make better use of that which exists – through coordinated grants and other cooperative strategies.

But the big answer to the looming problem of limited water supply is likely to be a new revenue infusion. James Eklund, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board — the state agency that crafted the plan and oversees water resources — told the Legislature’s Water Resources Review Committee on Monday that a plea to voters for that money is forthcoming. “A comprehensive package is not a glamorous thing to talk about, but I just don’t see any way around it,” Eklund said. “It’s just too important a resource to too many sectors to kick the can down the road.”

Eklund is correct, but before going to voters with such a request, the state – and all its water stakeholders – must establish a clear set of priorities around which projects and programs are essential to the task. The water plan, for all its merit in comprehensively naming the challenges and the multivariate solutions they will require, does not yet contain such a hierarchy. It will need one to make meaningful progress – through administrative action and legislative changes to improve and ease the regulatory environment as well as infuse a conservation and coordination ethic into state water planning and use. And if a funding measure is to go before voters, specific action steps are essential. The plan has the foundation, but requires more detail before it can be put into action.