Interior, partners tout projects to protect water supplies

摘要

FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- Interior Department officials joined foresters and water managers here Thursday to tout new investments in an interagency effort to protect key water facilities from future wildfires. Interior announced $187,500 for Colorado projects under the Western Watershed Enhancement Partnership, a year-old, Westwide initiative to partner with federal and local agencies to identify and buffer water projects most at risk from wildfire in a hotter, dryer West. The new money will fund forestry work around the Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) and Fryingpan-Arkansas projects, which use diversions, tunnels, pipes, dams and reservoirs to carry western slope water under the Continental Divide to Colorado's thirsty Front Range.