The Lifeblood of Our Communities

By Jody Shadduck-McNally

There is no life without water. They say that in Colorado when you touch water, you touch everything. Water is vital in Larimer County to fight wildfires, to drink, to make beers in our world-famous breweries, for agriculture, for irrigation, for household uses, to recreate, for our wildlife and their habitat, for our ecosystems, for generating power, and much more.

Colorado is known as the headwaters state. Larimer County is the headwaters for the Cache La Poudre River, the Big Thompson River, and many other important tributaries that start in Larimer County. I make it a priority to hike to these headwaters of our crucial rivers every year. Understanding the intricacy of water, the water eco cycle, water rights, and water law is essential and critical, yet a complex, challenging, task for county commissioners and elected officials.

In 2020, I attended the CSU – Colorado Water Center Water Literate Leaders Program, a several-month-long course that prepares leaders to meet the ever-changing needs of communities. All three current Larimer County Commissioners have participated in this course. We partnered with the Colorado Water Center to provide a public information series last year that has been well received by the public and our partners. (https://www.larimer.gov/public-affairs/presentations/larimer-county-water-education-series).

The commissioners also supported work on our first-ever Water Master Plan for Larimer County. While we’re not water providers, we are engaged collaborators and conveners in this space. Larimer County is one of the only counties in Colorado that will have a water master plan. We started this work in 2023 with the vision to complete the plan by the end of this year.

Larimer County, guided by a commitment to stewardship, is dedicated to safeguarding local and regional water systems, aligning future land use with available water resources, and helping to build resilient communities and ecosystems equipped to address future water challenges. Our Vision and Goals have been consolidating input gathered from various sources, including feedback from five Larimer County boards, conversations with the project’s advisory groups, and insights from the Planning Commission and Board of Larimer County Commissioners.

This month, the commissioners, staff, and partners were accepted by the Sonoran Institute to attend their Growing Water Smart workshop in Estes Park with other local governments. Growing Water Smart is a program of the Sonoran Institute and the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, a Center of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. This workshop focused on integrating water and land use policies. The facilitators introduced new perspectives for a range of communication, public engagement, planning, and policy implementation tools to work towards watershed health, water-land use planning, accomplishing our water master plan goals, and water resiliency goals. 

I am excited, heartened, and inspired by the conversations, discussions, and work accomplished with our stakeholders, partners, and staff. Across  Larimer County and our region, planning for resilient and sustainable water supplies requires not only working across interdependent basins, water providers, government agencies, and local partners – it also requires us to work across interdependent sectors such as environmental, community development, sustainability, agriculture, and more. We are in this together.

Water is essential and consequential to Colorado’s economy, environment, and people, and our county and state water challenges have led to collaboration and cooperation in many ways. 

Thank you for your engagement. I am proud and humbled to work hard on your behalf.

Jody Shadduck McNally is a Larimer County commissioner serving all of Larimer County.