Well, the legislative session is over, and my inbox is filled with notifications of the many, many bills Gov. Jared Polis has signed, as well as the few he vetoed, and I could write quite a few pages on the new laws and what they mean for our future.

I’d like to write, for example, on HB26-1318, the “Traffic Safety Near Schools” bill, that seems to both increase the size of school zones on roads near schools, while also giving local governments the ability to adjust the zones a bit, allowing, I guess, for common sense. This is the type of bill I often mentioned to my students when I was teaching at the AF Academy as an illustration of the kind of detailed and hard work our legislators put in, but about which we rarely hear.

I’d also like to do a deep dive into HB26-1135, the “Transparency of Chemicals Used in Hair Products” act. The summary of the bill reads: “On and after July 1, 2027, a manufacturer of a hair relaxer product or a hairpiece product (covered hair product) is prohibited from selling or distributing a covered hair product in the state that contains an intentionally added carcinogen or reproductive toxicant unless the covered hair product has a warning label that notifies the consumer the covered hair product contains an intentionally added carcinogen or reproductive toxicant, which warning label must comply with certain requirements depending on whether the covered hair product contains an intentionally added carcinogen, an intentionally added reproductive toxicant, or both (warning label requirement).” If I read that correctly, Colorado law now requires companies making hair products to either not use ingredients that are thought to cause cancer, or, if they do use such chemicals, they need to put a warning on the bottle. Hm… Seems a bit out of whack for me.

And HB26-1344 changes how the state Podiatry Board operates and requires better record keeping.

But I’m not going to talk about any of that.

Instead, I want to again draw your attention to a terrific section of Colorado Politics, the Out West Roundup. In the current edition, we learn the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on a settlement package proposed by the states that make use of the Rio Grande River. When you talk about Colorado rivers, you most often think of the Colorado River, as it winds westward, cutting canyons and irrigating fields, all while it provides drinking water to a bunch of folks.

But there is another river that also starts in Colorado, albeit one that gets far less attention from the public, even as the Supreme Court makes a ruling regarding it. At the base of Canby Mountain in the San Juan mountains of southwest Colorado, several streams come together to form the Rio Grande River. Starting off at an astounding 12,000 feet up, the river flows, or at least it used to flow, some 1,900 miles to the Gulf of Mexico (sorry, not going to call it the “Gulf of America. Oh, and it’s just “the Kennedy Center” and living people don’t get to have their image on our currency, and, well, I could go on…).

Where was I?

Oh, right, the Rio Grande.

The mighty Rio Grande has been a vital water source for many people for centuries. Yet today, there are stretches of the river that become – one of the most poetic phrases in the English language — “ephemeral Arroyos.” That is to say, the river dries up by the time it reaches Albuquerque regularly, in fact is has done so in three of the last five years. Dry riverbeds are not a good thing.

New Mexico seems to be the biggest water abuser, though none of the states through which the Rio Grande flow is completely innocent of water over usage.

Happily, a settlement has been reached, and it has wound its way up to the Supreme Court. That court, now nearly completely a partisan political organization, surprisingly (at least to me) did approve the agreement, and it looks like every state stepped up, including New Mexico. Under the new agreement, New Mexico will reduce its water usage by just under six billion gallons over the next 10 years. Less groundwater will be extracted and two huge irrigation districts in southern New Mexico will phase out their water use. The agreement also explores additional ways to provide water, to include better collection of storm water runoff and perhaps even importing water.

Back in 2022, I stood on my rickety soapbox here on CoPo to call for a national water grid, along the lines of our power grids, to bring water from the eastern U.S., where there is plenty and often too much, to the dry west. That was four years ago, and to date, no legislators or other government officials have reached out to discuss my plan (a plan also conceived of by many, many others), so I’ll just continue to sulk around.

But fundamentally, we must do even more. The Ogallala Aquifer, the vast underground water source for many states, is being critically depleted. The problem, of course, is that we are extracting water from that aquifer at a rate far above the replacement rate. Currently, scientists estimate if we stopped all water extraction today (which we won’t do), it would take over 6,000 years for the aquifer to “refill.”

Clearly, we must be smarter with water. The settlement the Supreme Court just approved is an important step, but there are many more steps that need to be taken. For example, we need to stop thinking that Kentucky Blue Grass yards are appropriate in a high desert area, to say nothing of golf courses.

Our taps are not likely to run dry tomorrow. But our children may one day wonder why we let things get as dry as they will be then. I don’t have a good answer, do you?

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.