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Jayla Poppleton��is the Executive Director of Water Education Colorado.��Previously, she oversaw print and digital content programming and��served 9 years as the editor for Headwaters magazine, Water Education��Colorado’s flagship publication. Throughout her career, Jayla has��focused on communicating important science and policy issues through��a human-interest lens. She has written extensively on all aspects of��Colorado water, and it continues to be the subject she is most��passionate about. Jayla serves on the Advisory Committees for TAP-IN��Colorado, and for the One World One Water Center at Metro State��University. Hailing from the outskirts of Chicago, Jayla was drawn to��beautiful Colorado, where she earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University in technical��journalism specializing in natural resources management. She fell in love with Colorado’s rivers while��guiding commercial rafts down the Cache la Poudre River, and now lives in Denver with her husband and��three sons.

Title: Mounting pressures on food producers in a headwaters state��– Water issues are fundamentally critical to every aspect of Coloradan lives and livelihoods.��Nowhere is that more true than for agricultural water, where 86 percent of the state’s water supplies��are used and where pressure grows every day from drought, climate change and competition from��growing urban communities. Farmers and ranchers are working proactively and collaboratively with��other stakeholders to figure out how to maintain their ability to grow food, while using the resource��more efficiently and entering creative arrangements to help preserve streams and share water with��metro areas. This work is happening within the context of Colorado’s role as the headwater for four��major watersheds that collectively provide water to tens of millions of people in 19 states and Mexico.��Everything we do here has an effect downstream and being the “water tower” of the West comes with��responsibilities and limitations.