With several feet of snow stacked on the mountains, the short-term forecast for Colorado's water supply looks good. It's the long-term - and the possibility of California, Arizona and Nevada demanding more water - that has some water experts worried. Sen.

The basic provisions of a historic agreement by seven states to share the Colorado River are simple, but a series of other agreements will be needed to make it work.

Measures dealing with water issues are expected to trickle into the Colorado Legislature during this year's session. Though it's too early to tell which water bills will be introduced during the 2008 session that begins on Wednesday, at least two ideas are being floated that could have long-term effects on the future of water in Colorado.

Photo courtesty of Journal/Sam Green

Water users across Colorado's Western Slope can rest a little easier. Last week’s landmark agreement on how to share the Colorado River during drought conditions provides some relief to worried water users, including ranchers and ski resort snow makers.

Water officials are delicately working out ways to handle a "call" from downstream - the possibility that Arizona, Nevada or California will demand more water from Colorado and other upriver states. A call could clamp down on most of the people who use the Colorado River's main channel and also its tributaries, like the San Juan, Animas and Dolores rivers.

Water experts from across the Western Slope gathered to talk about their nightmare scenario: a legal demand from California, Arizona and Nevada to send more water down the rivers. It's known as a "compact call," and it has never happened since the Colorado River Compact was signed in 1922.

Uncertainty about what could happen if predictions of global warming prove accurate or the Southwest suffers another drought have become the root of concern of two Western Colorado water districts.

In a move designed to protect the natural environment of the Slate River, the state of Colorado has issued a water call on some junior water users in the Crested Butte area. As a result of recent low flows in the Slate River, the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) placed a call on its in-stream flow rights, which were established in 1980.