The Nature Conservancy has commissioned a report exploring the perceptions of demand management on Colorado’s West Slope. It is intended to help shed light on the social/cultural issues that surround demand management in order to help everyone engaged in the discussion better understand the challenges and identify opportunities to move forward.

Click here for the full report.

Click here for the executive summary.

The work was completed by Kelsea MacIlory, a PhD candidate at Colorado State University.

The report lays out three key findings from the research, which included interviewing 34 producers and 10 additional experts on Colorado’s West Slope in the Spring of 2019.

1. Awareness and understanding of demand management varies.

2. Defining “voluntary, compensated, temporary, and proportional/parity” is not straightforward.

3. Conversations about demand management are linked to other tensions.

The Family Farm Alliance earlier this month released a two-volume report that features interviews with Upper Colorado River Basin and Lower Colorado River Basin water users. Demand management was a key topic of concerns expressed by several of those interviewed.