With the 2016 Colorado legislative session behind us, the interim committees now begin their work to dig deeper into the issues that present some of Colorado’s biggest challenges. Many legislators serve on at least one of the interim committees, which often involve field tours around the state to see and talk with people on a variety of policy topics.
I’m on two interim committees, one focused on forest health and the other on water resources. These two topics are intertwined, as the health of our forests directly affects the quality and quantity of our water supply. This year, I am chairing the wildfire matters committee and am vice-chairwoman of the water resources review committee. As senator for eight counties in the southwestern corner of Colorado, I rarely need to explain why these committees are important to my district’s constituents, but, in fact, these committees are important statewide, including to the urban areas of the state, and here’s why:
Colorado’s a very popular state to live in these days. The state demographer forecasts that the population, currently about 5½ million people, will grow to over 8½ million by 2050. Where will these people live? Some of the newcomers will move to the Western Slope. The forecast is that about 1 million people will live on the Western Slope by 2050, about double what we have today. But, the vast majority of Coloradans, over 7 million strong, will live on the Front Range.
What does it mean to Colorado as a whole to have so many people packing in along the semi-arid, fire-adapted environment of the Front Range? This population increase will lead to more people living in the wildland urban interface, (WUI), where wildfires are the hardest to fight, pose the greatest threat to public safety and cost the most in loss of life and property. This increase in Colorado population will also lead to mounting pressure on securing and using water supplies to accommodate this new growth in our state. Pulling up the welcome mat isn’t an answer, so the Legislature needs to focus considerable attention studying how to meet the challenges this kind of growth presents to all of its residents, now and in 2050.
This will be much of the focus of the wildfire matters committee this interim. We’ll have two field tours; one will be along the Front Range where major catastrophic fires in the Colorado Springs area have occurred. We’ll visit a biochar facility in Pueblo to explore private-sector opportunities regarding excess fuel load in the forests and in the WUI that isn’t marketable to the timber industry. There’s an important role for the private sector in re-establishing forest health as a decline in severance taxes as the revenue source to get the needed work done is clearly not sustainable or sufficiently productive.
We’ll also head west along the I-70 corridor to see the mitigation work being done by water utilities dependent on healthier forests for their municipal water supplies and by conservation groups like The Nature Conservancy. We’ll visit a biomass electricity generation facility in Gypsum to further explore opportunities for productive use of unmarketable timber. I’m working with state and federal forest service personnel, as well as local governments and fire districts, to add meaningful information to the committee’s agenda.
Ellen Roberts represents Senate District 6 in Colorado’s General Assembly. The district encompasses Montezuma, Dolores, La Plata, Archuleta, Montrose, San Miguel, San Juan and Ouray counties. Contact Sen. Roberts by phone at (303) 866-4884, or by e-mail ellen.roberts.senate@state.co.us
