Education

The Water Information Program (WIP) - provides essential opportunities for water education to the Southwest Basins of Colorado. WIP is a public information program sponsored by a variety of organizations that include agricultural, electric/energy, environmental, and water sectors in the nine-county Dolores/San Juan River Basin of Southwestern Colorado. The purpose of the WIP is to explain, promote, and publish objective and balanced information, educational workshops and festivals related to water in Southwestern Colorado. By providing coordinated, well-funded, and impactful education, outreach, and public engagement programs, members of our community become engaged in well-informed community discourse and decision making regarding balanced water solutions.

The Water Information Program, established in 1994 by the Southwestern Water Conservation District (SWWCD) along with various partners, has experienced significant growth. Over the past many years, the number of organizations recognizing the program's value and joining as partners has more than doubled, increasing from 15 to 30. Each partner contributes based on their individual resources, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, with the Southwestern Water Conservation District matching every dollar contributed.

Each is important to keep the WIP viable and able to provide the important water education benefits discussed above on behalf of each of the participants throughout the Dolores/San Juan River Basin. Visit the website at https://waterinfo.org/

A snapshot of the WIP educational programs:

• Annual Children’s Water Festival: For the past 24 years the Water Information Program has produced the annual Water Festival on behalf of Southwestern Water Conservation District. The festival takes place the first Wednesday in May and has been held at Fort Lewis College. Over 800 fifth grade students from across the nine-county Dolores/San Juan River Basin participate, with more than 30 presenters and 50 volunteers who lend support to make this fun event such an annual success. Volunteers are always needed!
• Water Law in a Nutshell Course:  This workshop offers a full day in-person, as well as, half day online setting to learn about aspects of the law related to water rights and ditch rights as applied in Colorado. Subject matter includes appropriation, limitations, abandonment and enforcement of various types of water rights, special rules for groundwater, public rights in appropriated water, interstate compacts and more. This workshop is offered a few times throughout the year and qualifies for continuing education credits for realtors, appraisers, and lawyers. There is a separate water law course specific to realtors offered as well. 
• Forests-to-Faucets Teacher Training Workshop: This is an annual intensive two-day in-the-field teacher training on local watersheds that qualifies for continuing education credit. The workshop builds teachers’ capacity for teaching watershed science by providing place-specific knowledge and activities that can be easily integrated in science and social science curricula. 
• Website: In addition to current events and news, there is a plethora of useful water-related information at waterinfo.org.
• Newsletter:  This e-newsletter covers a wide variety of water-related topics locally and regionally, including current events, SW Basin Roundtable updates, water conservation and quality.
• Brochures: Come by the office to pick up brochures on a wide variety of water-related topics, including rainwater harvesting, ditches and diversions, and water conservation.
• Lending Library: Now with more than 200 water-related books and movies available for checkout.

Water Education

• Four Corners Waters Center at Fort Lewis College
• Mountain Studies Institute
• San Juan Mountain Association
• Water Education Colorado (Citizens guides to water topics, programs & event, and education resources)
• Water Terms and Glossary

STATEWIDE WATER EDUCATION ACTION PLAN

SWEAP is the first-of-its-kind, a water education guide that organizations and individual educators can use to realize the Education and Outreach goals set forth in the Colorado Water Plan. Those goals focus on ensuring Coloradans have access to accurate information and are empowered to participate in stakeholder decision-making processes. The framework features 10 key outcomes, related strategies, and examples of actions local entities can take to reach their unique audiences. Developed with the assistance of more than 40 water educators statewide, SWEAP will empower Coloradans to take an active role in their communities and make informed decisions about critical water issues.

Water education is one of eight comprehensive aspects of the Colorado Water Plan to ensure a sustainable water supply for Colorado’s growing population by 2050 in a way that respects and preserves the state’s diverse values.

SWEAP does not mandate local actions, rather addresses obstacles to a coordinated, more consistently defined approach that results in progress on a statewide level.

For more information check out the SWEAP website: https://www.cowateredplan.org/, to view the SWEAP plans, click on the SWEAP Executive Summary or Full Plan.

BENEFITS OF SWEAP

SWEAP bridges water education gaps across the state and provides opportunities for educators to ensure:

• Coloradans have the knowledge and skills needed to take an active role in their communities and make informed decisions about critical water issues. 
• Water education is inclusive and accessible to underrepresented communities.
• Educators can customize local actions to reach their unique audiences.
• Opportunities are available to mobilize funding and resources for water education.
• Baselines and assessment results demonstrate the value of local and regional education activities.

Glossary of Frequently Used Water Terms

Terms used in the water industry are often not employed in everyday conversation. With this in mind, a handy reference such as this might be useful for those who wish to gain a better understanding of the nomenclature.

Abandonment: Nonuse and the demonstrated intent to legally give up the right to use water for any purpose.
Acre Foot: A volume of water equal to one foot in depth covering an one acre; approximately 325,851 gallons. Roughly two-thirds of an acre foot serves the needs of a typical family of four for a year.
Adjudicate: To determine rights by a lawsuit in court.
Alluvial Water: Groundwater that is hydrologically part of a natural surface stream system.
Appropriate (or appropriation): To take the legal actions necessary to create a right to take water from a natural stream or aquifer and put it to beneficial use at a specified rate of flow, either for immediate use or to store for later use. Usually confirmed by a water court decree.
Aquifer: An underground layer of sand, gravel or rock through which water can pass and is stored. Aquifers supply water for wells and spring.
Artesian: Groundwater, well or an underground basin in which water is under pressure greater than atmospheric and will rise above the level of its upper confining surface if given the opportunity to do so.
Augmentation Plan: A court-approved plan that allows a water user to divert water out of priority so long as adequate replacement is made to the affected stream system and water right in quantities and at times so as to prevent injury to the water rights of others.
Basin: The drainage or catchment area of a stream of lake.
Beneficial Use: Lawful and prudent use of water that has been diverted from a stream or aquifer for human or natural benefit.
Call: The exercise by an historically senior water right holder of “calling” for his water rights, requiring junior water right holders to allow water to pass to the senior right holder; a demand that upstream water rights with more recent (junior) priority dates than the calling right cease diverting.
Clean Water Act: The federal law that established how the United States will restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the country’s waters.
Colorado Doctrine: “First in time, first in right.” (see Prior Appropriation)
Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB): The state water policy board made up of appointed members authorized to appropriate water in streams and lakes in amounts determined necessary to preserve the natural environment to a reasonable degree. The CWCB also finances water projects and oversees statewide water conservation.
Compact: A contract between states and ratified by Congress that controls the division of water from a river or stream that flows across the states’ boundaries.
Compact Call: The requirement that an upstream state cease or curtail diversions of water from the river system that is the subject of the compact to satisfy the downstream state’s compact entitlements.
Conditional Water Right: Legal preservation of a priority date that provides a water user time to develop a water right while reserving a more senior date. A conditional water right becomes an absolute right when water is actually put to beneficial use.
Consumptive Use: Any use of water that permanently removes it from a natural stream system.
Cubic Feet Per Second (CFS): A rate of flow of water passing a given point, amounting to a volume of one cubic foot for each second of time. Equal to 7.48 gallons per second, 448.8 gallons per minute, or 1.984 acre feet per day.
Direct Flow (or Direct Right): Water diverted from a river or stream for use without interruption between diversion and use except for incidental purposes, such as settling or filtration.
Diversion: The removal of water from its natural course or location, or controlling water in its natural course or location, by means of a ditch, canal, flume, reservoir, bypass, pipeline, conduit, well, pump or other device.
Due Diligence: The efforts necessary to bring an intent to appropriate water to fruition; actions that demonstrate a good faith intention to complete a diversion of water within reasonable time.
Firm Annual Yield: The yearly amount of water that can be dependably supplied from the raw water sources of a given water supply system.
Free River: An occasion when there are no calls upon a river; any legal water rights holder can draw as much as decreed under that right.
Futile Call: A situation in which a junior (more recent) priority is allowed to continue to divert in spite of a downstream senior call when curtailing the junior would not produce any additional water for the senior.
Gallons Per Capita Per Day (GCD): A term generally used to approximate the average amount of water used per day, per person, over a period of one year.
Instream Flow: Water flowing in a natural stream bed; water required for maintaining stream flow or for fish.
Injury: The action of another that causes or may cause the holders of decreed water rights to suffer loss of water at the time, place and amount they would be entitled to use under their water rights if the action had not occurred. Injury is a significant issue in any water court proceeding and in determinations of the state and division engineers.
Junior Rights: Water rights that were obtained more recently and therefore are junior in priority to older or more senior rights.
Miner’s Inch (or Statutory Inch): A measurement of water flow. In Colorado, 38.4 miner’s inches is considered equivalent to one cubic foot per second.
Nonconsumptive Use: Water drawn for use that is not consumed, such as water diverted for hydroelectric generation. It also includes such uses as boating and fishing, where water is still available for other uses.
Nonpoint Source: The source of pollution discharged over a wide land area, not from one specific point, that finds its way into streams, lakes and oceans, such as runoff from streets, parking lots, lawns, agricultural land, individual septic systems and construction sites.
Nontributary Water: Underground water in an aquifer that neither draws from nor contributes to a natural surface stream in any measurable degree.
Point Source: The source of pollution discharged from any identifiable point, including ditches, channels, sewers, tunnels and containers of various types.
Potable: Water that does not contain pollution, contamination, objectionable minerals or infective agents and is considered safe for human consumption; drinkable.
Prior Appropriation: The water law doctrine that confers priority to use water from natural streams based upon when the water rights were acquired. Water rights in Colorado and other western states are confirmed by court decree; holders of historically senior rights have first claim to withdraw water over holders who have filed later claims.
Priority: The right of a senior water rights holder to divert from a natural stream before a junior holder.
Priority Date: The date a water right is established.
Raw Water: Untreated water.
Reservoir: An impoundment to collect and store water. Raw water reservoirs impound water in a watershed; terminal reservoirs collect water where it leaves a watershed to enter the treatment process, and treated-water reservoirs are tanks or cisterns used to store potable water.
Return Flow: Water that returns to a stream after it has been used.
Riparian: Referring to land or haitat immediately adjacent to the stream channel.
Runoff: Water that flow on the surface of the Earth into streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans.
Safety Factor: An amount of water added to demand projections to protect against unforeseen changes in water supply and demand.
Senior Rights: Water rights that are staked the earliest with the water court.
Tap: A physical connection made to a public water distribution system that provides service to an individual customer.
Trans-Basin Diversion: The conveyance of water from its natural basin or origin into another basin.
Treated Water: Water that has been filtered and disinfected. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with potable water.
Tributary: A stream or river that flow into a large one.
Wastewater: The used water and watereborne solids that flow to a wastewater treatment plant. Storm water, surface water and groundwater infiltration also may be included in wastewater that enters a plant.
Water Right: A property right to make beneficial use of a particular amount of water with a specified, historical priority date.
Wetlands: Areas with standing water or a high water table that under normal circumstances support vegetation typically adapted to saturated soil conditions; generally includes swamps, marshes, bogs, and areas with vegetation that grows in or around water.