Background

Water management issues have fundamentally shaped the laws, political and social institutions, economy, and culture of the residents of the Denver area since its beginnings. Denver was founded where two streams meet in the semiarid South Platte valley and has since spread outward to occupy the juncture between the water-scarce High Plains to the east and the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains to the west.

Since permanent settlement began in 1859, the successive waves of occupants – miners, irrigation farmers, and later residents of a complex urban service and trade center – have fought to conquer and shape the natural environment to their needs. Land, water, and minerals have been taken where they could be found and exploited to their full, and new resources sought in more distant searches. The values of this society have been those of achievement through aggressive struggle to create and mold an improved environment that compensated for the inadequate environment that nature provided. The society has grown and flourished under an entrenched system of law, custom, and institutional culture that was formed by, and in turn protects, traditional values.

These values are now being challenged by continued growth. Many people now recognize that the growth that has sustained economic vitality is increasingly costly to support because the resources that fuel growth are scarcer and more distant. Another challenge is an awareness that growth itself reduces amenities of life and fouls the environment.

As dissatisfaction intensifies over the conditions of life in the Denver area, an area still considered attractive although no longer ideal, the values that have sustained growth and prosperity are increasingly attacked.