5th Annual Poudre River Forum – It’s Not Too Late To Register

“Listening to Understand”

Friday, Feb 2, 2018 – 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 pm. Greeley – Island Grove Event Center

Registration – $60.00 and includes Breakfast and Lunch

Scholarships for Students and Reduced Rates Available

Register now to join us! Registration includes the full day’s program, as well as breakfast, lunch, and a closing beer/soft drinks celebration with opportunities to win Poudre prizes. Pre-registration is required.

Each year, the Forum brings together those who farm on the Poudre, drink beer from the Poudre, and advocate for Poudre health to learn from one another and to explore how we might move from conflict to collaboration in regard to the Poudre.

This year’s program gives us the opportunity to see how well we can listen and ask questions instead of postulating positions, to help us bridge ideological barriers.

8:00-9:00 Breakfast Sandwiches/Coffee/Tea Displays View of the Poudre from Local Organizations

9:00—9:10 Framing the Day—Welcome MaryLou Smith – Colorado Water Institute, Sean Cronin – St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District, South Platte River Basin Roundtable

9:10—9:20 Who Is Here Today? An Interactive Audience Poll

9:20—9:40 Can “Listening to Understand” Make our Water Talk More Productive? Martin Carcasson, CSU Professor, Center for Public Deliberation

9:40—10:45 Can We Grow Water Smart?

• Greg Johnson – Colorado Water Conservation Board staff, will give an overview of the State’s current water planning efforts, describing a new basin-by-basin planning approach based on a set of alternative supply and demand scenarios.

• Carol Webb – City of Fort Collins, will share what came out of a recent regional workshop “Resilient Communities and Watersheds Growing Water Smart,” as well as the collaborative dialogue underway by the City of Fort Collins Water Utility, East Larimer County Water District and Fort Collins-Loveland Water District.

• Kerri Rollins – Larimer County Open Space Program, will discuss the Larimer County/Broomfield Ag/Urban Water Sharing Project

• Panel and Audience Q&A Facilitated by Sean Cronin

10:45—11:15 BREAK View Displays

11:15—11:30 Poudre Splashes: Snapshots from 2017 —Corey Odell, Odell Brewing, will share 10 different spotlights of what various groups and individuals have accomplished on the Poudre this past year. And how YOU can get a spotlight in next year’s Poudre River Forum.

11:30—12:00 What are Poudre Ag Producers Doing to Improve Water Quality?

• Brief video about what farmers around the state are doing to reduce water pollution from nutrients—featuring, among others, Jon Slutsky, owner of La Luna Dairy in Wellington. Jon is a member of the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission, and will speak about this issue from a Poudre perspective.

• Mark Sponsler, Colorado Corn Growers, will speak about how air quality improvements on Poudre farms is helping water quality in Rocky Mountain National Park!

• Audience Q&A facilitated by Sean Cronin

12:00—12:50 Lunch and Time to Visit Displays

12:50—1:00 Poudre Pioneer Award—presented by Reagan Waskom

1:00—1:10 Introduction of Keynote Speaker by Poudre Heritage Alliance Sean Conway, PHA board member and Weld County Commissioner will introduce Greg Hobbs

1:10—1:55 Keynote Speakers Greg Hobbs, retired Colorado Supreme Court Justice, and Dr. Michael Welsh, UNC history professor, will talk about the Union Colony/ Greeley water history book, rooted in the Poudre River experience and expanding West-wide, they are currently writing.

1:55—2:55 As the Poudre Flows—Angling on a Theme Sean Cronin will introduce a panel of “lightening speakers” who will each tell a story in seven minutes pertinent to the question of Poudre flows, past, present and future.

• John Kolanz, formerly City of Greeley legal counsel, will tell about the Joint Operations Plan—an early collaborative effort between ag/urban/environmental interests to increase winter flows in the Poudre

• Ellen Wohl, CSU Geosciences professor, will ask the question: Does the Poudre River have rights of its own to the flows it needs to be healthy?

• Dan Brown, Cache la Poudre Water Users Association legal counsel will tell about the Poudre Runs Through It Study/Action Work Group’s FLOWS initiative to engage local domestic water providers and ditch companies to enter into an augmentation agreement to provide increased flows through a stretch of the Poudre

• Karlyn Armstrong, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Water Projects Mitigation Coordinator, will tell about the flows aspects of the Northern Integrated Supply Project (NISP) Fish and Wildlife Mitigation and Enhancement Plan; which is the state of Colorado’s position on fish and wildlife mitigation for NISP

• Kurt Fausch, stream ecologist and CSU professor emeritus, will tell how reduced flows under scenarios of potential storage projects could negatively affect Poudre River health

• Ken Kehmeier, recently retired from Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and a member of the Poudre Runs Through It Study/Action Work Group will be shown in a YouTube video telling about his wild and crazy idea of getting the cooperation of all diverters on the Poudre to agree to every few years stay out of the river simultaneously to provide flushing flows

• Facilitated Q&A

2:55—3:40 Active Listening Exercise at the Tables Martin Carcasson will introduce an exercise in which participants will have a dialogue, at their respective tables, about the topic of Poudre Flows, drawing from the session just ended.

3:40—3:45 Closing, Clicker Exercise about the Day—Sean Cronin

3:45—4:30 Beer & Refreshments Displays

Poudre Prizes Drawing at 4:00pm—must be present to win