HB21-1043 Summary

• Colorado Water Conservation Board must contract with a Colorado higher education institution to study underground water storage in designated, tributary, nontributary, and non-nontributary aquifers to maximize beneficial water use within the state.

• Study must evaluate ways to store water underground when available and minimize water flowing to downstream states while maintaining compliance with interstate compacts, federal law, water rights decrees, and Colorado's prior appropriation system.

• Study must identify specific aquifers suitable for underground storage, revenue sources to fund projects, existing or planned storage projects, and roles various water entities could play in financing and implementing projects.

• Study must recommend legislative changes needed to implement managed underground storage projects and exclude consideration of aquifers with high water tables near the surface where increased water levels would damage existing structures and land uses.

• Water Resources Review Committee must receive the study report by August 1, 2022, and either draft legislation to implement recommendations or submit the study with its own recommendations to the agriculture and water committees by January 1, 2023; this subsection repeals September 1, 2023.