Book Review - Chapter 2 (Jones and Cech)

The second chapter of "Colorado Water Law for Non-Lawyers" is about early water use and development in the state.  Of course it begins in ancient times and concludes in the mid 1950's as the major development projects are listed pretty much in chronological order.  The water development focus is very much on surface water projects with side bars on the major players in these projects - primarily in the 1850 - 1905 time frame.  The mention of these projects are largely superficial with not a lot of detail on the politics, local governmental players, financing or organizational structures.  I assume this is by design in that an exhaustive section on these issues for every major project listed is likely not warranted.  I would have enjoyed a little more detail, though.  The groundwater development is mentioned only briefly, but again, I wonder how better it could have been covered without bogging down the book.  I hope that groundwater is included in more detail later in the book.  My largest, real criticism, is that a map should have been included as the surface water projects were being reeled off.  Not being familiar with Colorado, I was geographically challenged in this chapter.  Of course, I could have gotten up and found a copy of a Colorado Atlas I suppose.  Overall, this was a short and sweet chapter that covered the very basics of major water developments in the state.  I enjoyed the description of ditch construction with oxen teams (borrowed from Dorothy Gardner in her book "Snow-Water") and am looking forward to Chapter 3.

Colorado Water Law for Non-Lawyers

Well, I promised a book review and I always deliver.  The book "Colorado Water Law for Non-Lawyers" was written by P. Andrew Jones and Tom Cech.  Mr. Jones is an attorney for the law firm of Lind, Lawrence and Ottenhoff, LLC and Mr. Cech is the Executive Director for the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District.  Both have long and storied careers in water - both ground and surface.  Since I'm still reading the book, I'll take the review chapter by chapter, so stay tuned.

Chapter 1:  Colorado Climate, Geology and Hydrology.  This chapter is very well written at a moderate level of detail - telling the reader far more than they likely already know, but not bogging them down trying to tell everything the authors know.  It covers the geology and climate in such a way that the hydrology - both ground and surface water - all of a sudden makes perfect sense.  They sort of start at the top with the central mountain region and trace everything downstream (East and West) precisely as a melting snowflake would see things.  I didn't know that Colorado had more 14'ers (14,000 ft+ peaks) than all other states combined - 53 of them.  The maps and figures provided are very well done and very on-point.  I especially liked the maps showing each of the 5 major river basins draining the state - the South Platte, Arkansas, Colorado, Rio Grande and White/Yampa.  The sidebars are also very interesting, but there being 13 of them, they tended to interfere with my reading continuity - maybe that's just me, though.  Finally, there is no shortage of numbers thrown at you - from precipitation to elevations to distances to discharges - whew!  I'm glad this is casual reading for me and there'll be no test given.  All-in-all a very enjoyable and fact filled first chapter!  More to come.