Selling Wyoming's water (Gillette: how much, to buy, live)

[Idunn]

"A project once considered far-fetched — piping water from western Wyoming across the Continental Divide to Colorado's booming Front Range cities — is getting a renewed look."

This from a recent article in the 'Denver Post' concerning a serious proposal to divert a good portion of Wyoming's water for use along the front range of Colorado. Some people in Colorado have speculated that the State of Wyoming will be happy enough to sell these water rights, and the citizens of Wyoming not otherwise miss it.

Just curious, please, what are your thoughts on this?

My apologies if this has been discussed before, but I see no recent thread on this topic. If it has, could someone please provide the title? This a link to the full article:
Thirsty cities eye Wyoming water - The Denver Post

[WyoNewk]

I had read about the privately funded project, and this one is basically the same thing with public funding. As a Wyomingite I have grave concerns about selling our water. On the other hand, selling it will allow Colorado to boom with another 5 million people and keep development in our state to a minimum. That's not a bad thing, imho. I also fear that if we don't use it (or sell it), we'll end up losing our rights to it anyway.

We lost the rights to most of our water runoff to states downriver a hundred years ago, and I doubt things have changed much. Those states have more population, more money for court battles and conceivably more need for the water, so guess what's going to happen a few decades from now.

Thirty-some years ago there was a proposal to build a coal slurry pipeline from Campbell County to Arkansas. The plan called for drilling into the Madison Formation for water, pulverizing the coal, mixing it into a slurry, and pumping it downhill to Arkansas where it would be burned in coal fired generating plants. It would have eliminated the need for some of the trains and guaranteed additional coal sales. It was turned down by Wyoming. Gillette has gotten most of its water from the Madison for nearly 30 years now, and new wells and a new pipeline, at a cost of roughly $250 million, is currently being planned to supply water to more of NE Wyoming, all from the Madison Formation.

My initial thoughts on selling Wyoming water to Colorado is no, but I'd be willing to listen to arguments. They're wanting water that's at the very edge of Wyoming as it flows into Colorado, so it's not water that we're now using. It's just that once the rights to it go to Colorado, we'll never get those rights back, no matter how much future generations of Wyominites want or need that water.

[jody_wy]

The water being diverted is colorados share of the green river, they want to ship a little wyoming water to farmers in eastern Wyoming to help and make the plan a little more passable

[WyoNewk]

Originally Posted by jody_wy

The water being diverted is colorados share of the green river, they want to ship a little wyoming water to farmers in eastern Wyoming to help and make the plan a little more passable

Where did you get that information? It was my understanding that they want to buy Wyoming's share.

[jody_wy]

we during resolutions debate at WSGA this spring in Gillette