DENVER — Don Ament has seen both sides of Colorado's water experience.
As a youngster, he hiked up and down the state's western mountains with his grandfather, a water commissioner. He got a firsthand look at how far people on the water-rich Western Slope would go to protect what some Coloradans call "gold" and others call the lifeblood.
"I was a little kid walking along with my grandfather and I'd see him open and close the head gates on tiny little streams of water that come from snowmelt," Ament said. "And he'd lock them, put a chain around them after he'd look at them. And I'd think, 'We're putting a padlock on this little trickle of water.' "
On the eastern side of the Rockies, his other grandfather farmed Colorado's arid high plains. Water was just as precious there, but nowhere near as plentiful.
"My grandfather bonded his farm and got into an irrigation company," Ament said. "And with their money they built a reservoir and took water out of the river and stored it and ran it out for these farms to make a dry country green."
The division in his family's experience mirrored the division that defined water management and control in Colorado from the start. Western Colorado has most of the state's water. The Western Slope gets about 80% of the precipitation that falls in Colorado.
But the eastern face of the Rockies has about 80% of the state's 3.8 million people and, as a result, much of the political power.
The sprawling network of huge tunnels and pipelines funneling water from the Western Slope to the Front Range of the Rockies and reservoirs dotting the mountains are testament to the pull of that power.
Ament, a Republican state senator from Iliff, expects the growth that made Colorado the fifth fastest-growing state last year to strengthen that pull. The farmer and rancher remembers how valuable water was to both his grandfathers 40 years ago.
"And you know what's happened to the growth in this state over the last 40 years and you know what's going to happen to the growth from now forward," he said.
But Ament fears Colorado is risking its future by not preparing for it. Ament, who headed a legislative study of water issues this summer, thinks dams are needed to store some of the water flowing out of state.
"I have no intent to take anybody's water or cause environmental tragedies. I just think I know a lot from experience," Ament said.
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