La Plata County commissioners appointed Susan Behery to the Southwestern Water Conservation District Board of Directors on Tuesday during their board meeting.
Former conservation board representative Amy Huff, a Durango water lawyer and southwest regional director for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District Rep. Jeff Hurd, resigned from the board in May with more than half a year left in her term.
The Southwester Water Conservation District was created by the Colorado House of Representatives in 1941 with the goal of protecting and conserving the use and development of water resources of the southwestern basin. The board is made up of nine members, each representing one of the nine counties included in the southwestern district.
“With what’s going on with our mega drought here, this board could not be more important right now,” Commissioner Marsha Porter-Norton said Tuesday. “Water is life in the West.”
Behery is a Durango-based hydraulic engineer who works at Barr Engineering and previously worked for the Bureau of Reclamation. She has also worked as an operator of Navajo Dam located on the San Juan River in northern New Mexico.
She has years of experience working on the Colorado River in an official capacity, and that is the type of experience commissioners said they were looking for in the county’s representative to the board.
Behery was chosen over four other candidates: Logan Hartle, Peter Butler, Samuel Perry and Blake Mamich.
“It's a very hard decision,” Porter-Norton said. “I really looked at what our state and our seven-state river basin with the Colorado River Compact are going to need, and what we need is somebody that understands water and the delivery of water and water infrastructure and water policy.”
jbowman@durangoherald.com
