With the unanimous vote of (the House Transportation and Energy Committee), I feel like I don't want to mess with a good thing.

What we have in front of the committee is agreement with all the parties, and that's a good thing.

We're striving to clean up the process. It's a compromise that everyone is frustrated with. I'm sure we're going to have some pretty heated debates about it.

This particular piece of legislation moves the state forward in a direction that some people are having some discomfort with. Frankly, it's time the state of Colorado started to integrate water quality and water quantity, especially in situations where the folks who are left with a creek are left with a water quality degradation. This bill applies only to situations where that might happen.

It's actually cool because they can build their decree within that volume. This gives them an incentive to ask for a reasonable amount of water and still meet their needs for their events.

I brought the bill for the landowners, and if the landowners are not happy, then I know we need more work.

The recreation community asked me (Thursday) in no uncertain terms to please not vote today.

It's going to be up for discussion but we need an alternative to keep everybody's feet to the fire. When I say it's an incentive-driven bill, that one (triple damages) was one of the incentives to keep both parties interested in an agreement instead of running right to court.

It really shows we have a problem in Colorado, a policy question that needs to be addressed.