Keep the Yampa wild and The Denver Post kicking

A wonderful spark of journalism from The Denver Post! Kudos to Bruce Finley for the extensive article about the Yampa River and related water matters. Water touches every aspect of our existence — it’s a basic necessity for life, for our economy, and for the quality of our lives. Consequently it is critical that we all be well informed on water issues.

There is widespread agreement that demand for water supplies will continue to increase while water availability will decrease as the result of climate change. With less water available in the future, increasing water conservation and water-use efficiency must be the first step in meeting demands. Unfortunately this was only briefly touched on in Finley’s article.

Obviously keeping water in our rivers is essential to healthy aquatic ecosystems but also critical to our growing recreational economy. The time is overdue for all to acknowledge that our water supplies are limited and that building more dams and diversions is not sustainable; instead we should focus on restoration of our rivers and riparian areas.

I hope The Post will continue to inform readers on critical water matters, and perhaps like the legendary phoenix rise from its ashes and be the paper it once was. It is equally important that the public be informed about, and engage in, decisions regarding our most basic resource — water.

Your excellent article “A Thirst for Water” on June 23 reveals quite a bit about this planet as well as Colorado. This planet has limitations regarding population and development.

How many people can this planet really support and how many should it support? How much development should we allow and how much is beneficial? Do we eventually need a stable economy rather than an expanding economy? Will the population bomb become a reality? There are a lot of questions we don’t have answers for.

Just as you can only fill a container to its brim, the Earth is only going to take just so much development. Water already is basically a manufactured product. Aside from the questionable climate change debate, there are a lot of questions we should be asking ourselves for the preservation of humanity and this planet. Perhaps we have not yet figured out what all those questions should be. There will come a time when technology will not be enough.