The Water Information Program

There are 33,600 wells now pumping and tens of thousands more on the drawing board. Forecasts show the boom extending 20, even 30 years into the future. Powerful economic and political forces are propelling the surge in Colorado drilling. "It's the epicenter," said Ted D. Brown, past chairman of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. Colorado has collected about $2.5 billion in severance taxes and federal royalties on oil and gas drilling and mining since 1980. To the south, New Mexico has built its oil and gas tax revenue into a permanent trust fund that tops $4.7 billion, earning hundreds of millions more dollars in interest a year than Colorado draws in total annual severance taxes.To the north, Wyoming has nearly $4 billion in its state trust fund. It plans to use oil and gas revenue to send 70 percent of its high school graduates to college on scholarship and still have enough left over to fund up to a quarter of its state budget. Colorado chose not to protect its trust fund with a constitutional ban on legislative raids, as New Mexico and Wyoming have. As a result, the state has just $20 million left in its reserve fund from oil and gas taxes, not counting $242 million kept as a revolving loan fund for water projects.

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