Of the myriad ways to measure anxiety in the West over water, add legislative activity in a drought year. The raft of water-related bills coursing through the Colorado legislature this session prompted one lawmaker, Randy Fischer, (D-Fort Collins), to wryly note in his hometown newspaper, “The number of water-related bills tends to be inversely proportional to the amount of snowpack we have.” The Coloradoan is tracking more than a dozen bills on the subject.

As commendable as it is for the state’s elected officials to rally around the issue, the year-to-year, ad-hoc policy advocacy also speaks to the shortcomings of Colorado’s water-planning methodology, particularly the lack of a strategic water plan. Instead, state planners here participate in a process, where water entities and jurisdictions across the state engage in an ongoing discussion about stewardship of the state’s water resources. Historically, it has served the state well, and as I’ve said before, the professionals who administer Colorado’s complex water law are top-notch.

In recent years, however, the process has left much to be desired, as water interests vie for legislative influence or oppose what they believe to be unreasonable incursions. The slurry of bills speaks for itself.

Moreover, Colorado’s most pressing strategic water issue – the disposition of its remaining Colorado River allocation – is missing from the legislative docket. Although demand now exceeds supply, the prospect of developing several hundred thousand acre-feet of water the state is entitled to remains only a discussion point. Colorado remains undecided as to whether it should join its Upper Basin brethren and move decidedly to develop its entitlement.

Would a strategic plan change this outcome? It’s likely. But today, a framework that facilitates the discussion and leads it toward a well-reasoned end-point seems eons away (here’s another look at why this is the case).

Yet Colorado may have a wild card in play. There’s much speculation here about the political future of former senator and recent Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. He comes back home tested by fire, literally, seasoned to again lead and still relatively young. Will Salazar enter the dialogue and change the course of the discussion?

Well-versed in Colorado water issues before he left for Washington, his post at Interior could not have exposed him more to regional water challenges, including the plight of the Colorado River and its Basin stakeholders. His agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, just completed the seminal Colorado River Supply and Demand study. Salazar is among the nation’s foremost experts on water in the West.

Water also provides Secretary Salazar the issue he needs to engage the political sphere here in what might otherwise be an awkward reentry. Colorado’s political leadership is true-blue, with a popular governor and two popular Democratic senators who don’t appear to be going anywhere soon.

Nor do they seem particularly inclined to challenge the status quo on water. Granted, hundreds of years of water law and precedent is some stiff status quo. Yet on the issue of the state Colorado River Compact allocation, none seem inclined to act boldly with the state’s interest on the line. Would Salazar?

For starters, Secretary Salazar should acknowledge what his former department now accepts as fact: Colorado uses less Colorado River water than it is entitled to by a significant amount.

Salazar’s Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner, Michael Conner, spelled out the supply scenario in 2009, asserting that “..we have a hydrologic determination that has basically set the boundaries of what the Upper Basin states can expect under the Colorado River Compact. So it is not the 7.5 million [acre-feet] that was projected in 1922. It is somewhere closer to the 6 million acre-feet. So that’s the hydrologic determination… The states understand and are planning to that level. And we’ll be supportive of their planning efforts and their evaluations.”

Colorado is entitled to 53 percent of 6 million acre-feet, or 3.18 MAF. The Bureau’s just-released Colorado River Supply and Demand study quantifies Colorado’s current annual demand at roughly 2.1 million-acre feet – meaning the state could easily develop several hundred-thousand acre-feet of water with ample room for error.

Why isn’t Colorado “planning their efforts” and acting on its remaining allocation? Its a tall order to get consensus on any water issue, for one. There’s powerful sentiment within the community against more development regardless of the entitlement. And without a roadmap, water is plain hard.

The media, among others, seem challenged to keep up. The past week, a Denver Post opinion-page contributor wondered, “…Just what is Colorado’s remaining share from the Colorado River and its tributaries? Nobody seems to know.” In fact, the Bureau of Reclamation, the agency of record for water in the West, does know – as does its former steward.

Salazar must also grasp the incongruous plight of his native state. As the most prolific headwater state in the basin, Colorado is the remaining party to the Colorado River Compact yet to develop, or set out to develop, its full entitlement. It has watered the blossoming of the Southwest – but is last to claim its rewards.

To suggest that Colorado deserves its fair share is to state the obvious. What’s lacking may be the framework to make the argument – and a politician with the bona fides to make it.

“Be quick.”

We heard this more than once from business contacts we met in China. Our objective – to connect U.S. technology and firms with money and partners in China – met with very positive reviews. But change is the rule in China today, and the advice to move fast reflects a sense of urgency that all businesses seem to operate with there.

For China business, now’s the time. If you’re not moving fast, you’re being left behind. And it shows — everywhere. Fifty years of economic growth have seemingly been compressed into 10.

This frantic pace has created environmental challenges as you’ve heard. Forecasts of China’s ecological collapse are perhaps overstated, but not by much. As I’ve written, renewable energy development and cleantech are supported there by necessity.

Not so in the U.S. The commitment here lacks by comparison. Investors are hesitant as a result. (Read Michele Chandler’s Planet-Profit Report story.) The implications are debatable, of course, but for U.S. firms looking for money and markets, opportunity may be elsewhere. U.S. companies with good technology and patience to form solid partnerships can prosper in China.

Patience – and good connections. If you’re interested, we can help.

Final thoughts:

For a news and information junkie like me, China’s tight grip on media was annoying, if not a big issue. My favorite online resources were always a click away. You’d be out of luck though if Facebook and YouTube are your go-to sites. And Google access is spotty, the result I guessed of an acrimonious relationship with Chinese authorities.

In today’s China, it’s hard to see how a more open media environment poses the same existential threat today as its leaders once thought. China’s young, urbane, educated population is on a mission – one that has little or nothing to do with ideology. They’ve tasted the fruits of a market economy (yes, a socialist-market-economy), have a firm grip on the modern world, and it’s inconceivable to me they’ll let it go.

We met two young journalists working for media owned and operated by the government. They were knowledgeable, sharp and dealing with the same issues U.S. journalists are in finding a foothold in a changing media world. We were in the offices of state-owned China Daily when news of Kim Jong Il’s death came across the wire. End of meeting. As in any newsroom, a flurry of activity ensued.

The one major difference? China Daily’s morning-after headline: “A Friend’s Departure.”

For me China was also a land of contradictions, considering where it’s been and how fast it’s going in the opposite direction.

We’re taught here that Mao is a revered figure in China, but my observation was that he’s a serious afterthought in Beijing and certainly in Shanghai – ignored, really – by those who blame him for holding back China from its rightful place on the world stage or those who simply find him to be irrelevant.

Deng Xiaoping is a more complex historical figure here, but in my conversations seemed to evoke similar ambivalence – he the man who set China on a path to economic reform. But to some, his legacy is tainted by Tiananmen Square in 1989, though even today his role in ordering the Army into Beijing is unclear.

China: thousands of years old, the leading world-power on several occasions throughout history, now with a young population with very little collective interest, seemingly, in the past.

Hopefully we’ll be back this spring – to continue to build bridges between the two most influential nations on the world stage.

With a slim snowpack serving only to reiterate Colorado’s long-term water challenge, its clear that reaching out to business to talk about water is increasingly important – but doing so in a meaningful way is difficult. Generally, business hasn’t been involved in the water discussion.

There’s every reason to believe they will be.

The system we rely on, the network of public providers that manage the complex web of water rights and delivery, is in flux, straining under the pressure of inexorable demand. And the scale of the challenge, of meeting growing demand for municipal and industrial water with finite or even diminishing supplies, is prompting a system-wide reassessment of how states and communities will meet their obligations.

The water landscape is changing. And business will be forced to get involved.

“Without a seat at the table,” says Jim Kuiken, SVP at global water infrastructure leader MWH, “their future will be decided for them.”

Business leaders in agriculture, energy, real estate, and manufacturing, to name a few, are engaged; their future is water-dependent and state and regional supply shortfalls are forecast in much of the West. Agriculture, especially, is in the bullseye. Ag is the largest single water – roughly 85% of current demand – and also the one dependable short-term new supply for urban users. Ag “transfers” are watering new development throughout the West.

But how long can the ag sector transfer water before its business is fundamentally changed? What impact will a diminished ag sector have on food production, on land-use, on quality of life issues in ag states and the economy at large?

The regional boom in gas and oil production is transforming America’s energy landscape. Energy development is water intensive. Large-scale gas and oil development requires more water. Other business segments will be the source – like ag. Colorado’s natural gas boom is a by-product, in part, of agricultural water. For how long?

(Developers of nuclear power face similar potential limitations. Utah recently approved a new 50,000 acre-foot diversion from the Green River for a new nuclear facility. A coalition of business and environmental voices oppose the allocation.)

When real-estate reawakens, as it will, water will replace finance as a significant barrier to growth in Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona, and other locales in the West. No-growth is real-estate’s ‘nuclear option’. How close to no-growth edicts are we in places like southeast-metro Denver and other locales? Don’t believe water can impact development? Developers of Sterling Ranch, or the Canyons, both in Douglas County, may disagree.

On the western slope in Colorado, and in communities along the River throughout the Basin, business that relies on steady, regular flows for their livelihood are attuned to the major fight developing over the future of the River. New alliances are forming to join the battle, like Protect the Flows, a coalition of business and environmental interests in western Colorado. They generally oppose new appropriations from the River, though Upper Basin interests may be entitled to more. Who’s right? Business, or, well, business that needs the water?

What impact can new corporate sustainability initiatives have on reducing demand and extending current supply? Should water replace energy conservation as the compelling ‘green’ initiative for business? If so, how?

Without a sustainable water plan – one that business supports – can the West promote its otherwise brilliant future? Or will industry rule out Colorado and the West and locate elsewhere?

Business will joining the water discussion to address these and a dozen other questions.

ColoradoBiz lost a meaningful part of its past this week. Former editor Bob Schwab passed away.

Born and raised in Chicago, Bob Schwab was an inveterate newspaper man turned magazine editor. If he had his druthers, he’d probably have lived a decade earlier, been a Mike Royko contemporary at theSun-Times, or Trib, and retired on a pension like those before him.

He certainly belonged. Bob was a talent, a working man’s writer and journalist who put in the time and earned the right later in life to be a columnist and editor, to have an opinion. He was passionate – and large – 6-foot-3 of irresolute blond hair and white-beard. His poetry was bare, raw but powerful. Potent. Chicago.

He arrived every morning with a paper under his arm, usually the Wall Street Journal, and made no pretense of working until he’d pored through the Journal, the Post, the Rocky, the New York Times. Unlike the self-styled media critics with whom he battled, he relished our media plurality; he was stained with ink.

We argued, owing to strong personalities, and to Bob, heartfelt differences. For him some things weren’t to be compromised. But we agreed early on that ColoradoBiz had lost its edge and that the way forward involved a commitment to great editorial. Our collaboration bore fruit. In 2006 we won the Morton Margolin Prize for Distinguished Business Reporting from the University of Denver Daniels College of Business Bob liked to remind me it was his parting gift, as he left the magazine shortly after.

Ironically, a disagreement with me over a magazine editorial compelled Bob to resign fromColoradoBiz, though I suspect he’d had enough of 21st century “journalism.” A year or so later, he was diagnosed with cancer. I wish we’d been there for him.

RIP, big fella.

The tale of the Colorado River has become tangled in part because of its evolution into two distinct water realities, that of the Upper and Lower River Basins. One operates in a deficit relative to its annual water allocation, the other a surplus. Arizona, Nevada and California are managing the river in reverse, backtracking to limits long since exceeded. Some of the water belongs to the Upper Basin, its origin. Indifferent before, these headwater states now cast a wary eye not only toward the Lower Basin but to each other’s plans to develop more from the river. Self-interest is replacing the collegial attitudes of the past.

To further complicate matters, water interests within the Upper Basin states have yet to fully reconcile their differences. This is certainly the case here, in Colorado, but it is played out similarly in states like California.

I described the rising tensions in the headwater states to Rita Sudman, Executive Director of the California Water Education Foundation, who calmly replied via email, “I think most people involved in the Western water debate will agree that flexibility is the key, that the ability to trade, transfer and make new types of arrangements including different types of storage, more conservation and deals, is all part of the mix to get more water to certain users.”

In other words, welcome to the party.

California is steeled not only to rough and tumble inter-basin river tussles with states like Arizona but to the type of in-state competition simmering in Colorado. Sudman’s most recent Colorado River Project River Report outlines the embattled state of the Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA), written to “settle California’s chronic overuse of the Colorado River” as it winds its way through a predictable litany of court challenges.

A divisive component of the QSA, one that may ring familiar to Colorado planners, involves a “water conservation/transfer agreement between Imperial Irrigation District (IID) and the San Diego County Water Authority.” IID manages water for California’s verdant Imperial Valley, which comes entirely from the Colorado River. It’s a California ag gem that shines to the tune of more than $1 billion a year in crop production.

But as with Western Slope interests here who chafe at water transfers east, there’s push-back. QSA “is not popular in the Imperial Valley, where proprietary feelings about water have always run strong and there is a belief that the QSA was foisted upon the Valley with less than favorable results.”

Michael Cohen, senior research associate with the Pacific Institute, adds, “Some people don’t want to see any water leave the valley.”

Familiar indeed. Move the conversation a thousand or so miles east, into the Rocky Mountains along the same river, change the valley reference from Imperial to Grand, and the sentiment is nearly identical.

Colorado is also hard at work to establish more modern water-sharing mechanisms. Denver Water and 40 Western Slope water suppliers recently hammered out the Colorado River Cooperative Agreement, signed in May. Among the provisions of the so-called “global” agreement is a commitment that “any new water project by Denver Water in the Colorado River Basin will be developed only in cooperation with those entities impacted by the development.” In others words, we’ll stop taking Western Slope water without asking.

What’s changed is that for the first time, Colorado faces a water supply gap: There won’t be enough to meet the needs of users, at current levels, in the near future. Collaboration is in everyone’s best interest.

But the agreement may quickly be tested.

As mentioned, Colorado and the other headwater states are entitled to more water. Colorado’s share may be as much as a million acre-feet, almost a third as much as it is using now – lots or water by any estimate.

Yet there’s a lack of consensus among officials here whether the state should aggressively pursue this water. There’s fear of a Compact “call,” where future data indicates we miscalculated, are using water earmarked for the Lower Basin and are asked to curtail use. There’s deeply rooted opposition to the prospect of more growth along the Front Range. Certainly any new supply will find its way to urban users and developers.

And there’s a fear that further west-to-east diversions of any kind will diminish business and lifestyle prospects in Colorado’s Western Slope communities. Without certainty as to how the state would move to develop more water out of the river, and despite the “global” agreement, opposition to developing the state’s remaining Compact allocation may well materialize – from within Colorado.

In California or Colorado, in the tale of the Upper and Lower Basins, the search for common ground – among basins, states, friends and neighbors – continues to be elusive.