The three-day annual summer conference of the Colorado Water Congress – the principle voice of the state’s water community – is coming up this week, with an agenda chock-full of discussions on the state’s water future.

The conference in Steamboat Springs will launch with a look at agricultural policy that will include the state’s ag commissioner, Kate Greenberg.

The General Assembly’s interim water resources review committee will begin its summer schedule at the water congress with a look at the state’s in-stream flow program. The committee traditionally spends its summer and early fall discussing water issues and developing legislation for the upcoming session.

How to fund the state’s water plan? The congress has discussed a broad list of ideas over the years regarding how to fund the $3 billion tab for the water plan that’s supposed to start flowing in 2020, through 2050.

So far, most of the funding for the water plan has come through severance taxes, but less of that is available every year. In the 2019-20 budget, Gov. Jared Polis obtained $10 million in general fund support for the water plan. Other possible funding sources include a gambling initiative on the 2019 ballot known as Proposition DD that could fund up to a quarter of the $100 million estimated by the water plan as the state’s share beginning in 2020.

Proposition DD, passed by the General Assembly in the 2019 session, is being touted as a way to fund the state water plan. According to a recent legislative analysis, taxes on betting could result in about $29 million per year in tax revenue, with most of that going to the water plan.

The water congress session on Wednesday on funding the state water plan promises to reveal “surprising funding sources available for non-traditional water uses,” and where funds are available now for environmental purposes.

Attorney General Phil Weiser, who impressed many at last year’s water congress with his in-depth knowledge of water issues, is on tap on Wednesday to discuss the Waters of the United States rule recently suspended by the Environmental Protection Agency, the water plan, his priorities for water, and the seven-state Drought Contingency Plan that governs future water use on the Colorado River.

U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton is scheduled to speak briefly to the water congress on Thursday morning on drought contingency planning.

Thursday also will feature a joint presentation from noted oceanographer Jean-Michel Cousteau and Holly Lohuis of the Ocean Futures Society on plastic pollution in the oceans, and what can be done to solve the problem.