The Water Rights Handbook. The Colorado Water Trust, with funding from Great Outdoors Colorado, prepared the Water Rights Handbook for Conservation Professionals. Until the release of the book, there had been little available guidance for conservation professionals who recognized the relationship between water and land conservation values. The Handbook is designed specifically to provide the technical assistance to Colorado’s numerous land trusts, dozens of local government open space programs, landowners, and hundreds of other professionals who participate in conservation easement transactions.
To create the Handbook, CWT engaged experts in water law, tax law, conservation appraising, engineering, and conservation easement transactions. The Handbook provides an impressive and succinct breadth of information that will help the reader understand the most salient features of a water-related easement transaction. Topics include Colorado water law, water rights due diligence, drafting conservation easement language, appraising water rights for conservation easements, and the tax implications of donating an easement with associated water rights. In short, the Handbook explains how to protect the water rights that are critical to the conservation values or public benefit of certain conservation easement transactions.
Water Rights Handbook for Conservation Professionals was written by Peter Nichols, Michael Browning, Kenneth Wright, Patricia Flood, and Mark Weston. Co-published by the Colorado Water Trust and Bradford Publishing with support from Great Outdoors Colorado, the handbook can be purchased by calling Bradford Publishing at 800-446-2831 or by purchasing the handbook online through Bradford Publishing.