CO Corn Recognizes Legislators of the Year

Last month, two Colorado Legislators were awarded the Legislator of the Year by the CO Corn Growers Association. Colorado Corn Communications Director Eric Brown shares more details

Brown: "Representative Jeni Arndt of Fort Collins really did a good job of spearheading efforts to pass the Flexible Water Markets Bill. This is something that we have worked on for quite sometime to give water rights owners more flexibility in leasing out portions of their water rights to other beneficial uses such as municipalities. Giving one more tool in the tool box to producers to prevent the ongoing buy and dry trend of irrigated ground just being outright purchased or the water rights attached to irrigated ground being purchased by cities that are growing along the Front Range. A bill that we were more than excited to see get passed and we certainly owe a lot of that to Representative Arndt. Then our other Legislator of the Year was Representative J. Paul Brown. He is a Durango-area sheep rancher and really helped — even though he is a West Slope guy — he did something huge for all the many corn growers on the East Slope in helping to pass the South Platte Water Storage Study. Something that will really take a comprehensive look at how much water is leaving the state through the South Platte Basin and also do a little more in identifying possible sites for new reservoirs. So we can't thank J.Paul Brown enough for helping us push that through — certainly having a West Slope voice in getting that passed was huge."