Back in the day, there was a popular bumper sticker on Colorado’s West Slope. It depicted a urinating cowboy, and the resulting stream spelled out “Divert this, Denver.”

Now there are 4 million people in the state and the amount of water that falls to Earth every year hasn’t changed. The quest for water has become more competitive and political than ever.

The West Slope is as jealous of its water as before, but in recent years Front Range water providers have become increasingly engaged in infighting. The best local evidence of that has been the water war between Colorado Springs and Pueblo over the Southern Delivery System.

SDS won’t be able to provide enough water for all of the groundwater-dependent communities near Colorado Springs. In fact, it might not provide any water for them at all.

But according to a November poll of ratepayers in the Donala Water and Sanitation District north of the city, 59 percent (see my blog) support building a pipeline to connect Donala with its neighbor to the south.

Ciruli Associates, the Denver polling firm, popped the question to 324 customers in Donala, which has 2,550 ratepayers in Gleneagle and some other territory. That gives the survey 95 percent certainty of a margin of error of 5 percent.

When asked whether they would support a higher tax to pay for the pipeline, the percentage dropped to just 51 percent, so any election automatically becomes too close to call.

Donala General Manager Dana Duthie said it would take $20 million to buy water rights and build the connecting pipeline.

“The actual infrastructure that we would have to do would be $11 million,” Duthie said. The rest of the money would be needed to acquire Arkansas River water rights and to pay Colorado Springs Utilities some kind of premium to deliver the water.

“I expect to pay impact fees,” Duthie said.

The big city utility would like to defray some of the cost of the $1.4 billion SDS, but it seems less eager to sell water outside of its boundaries. Given the relative scarcity and the large amount of undeveloped ground in the city limits, that’s understandable.

Yet it’s also understandable that “Colorado Springs” really refers to a greater community, because so many in Gleneagle and elsewhere work and socialize in Colorado Springs.

The Donala poll is important because it shows some people, maybe a majority, are willing to ante up to buy a long-term water supply. It sounds like a lot of money, but Donala has been forced to re-drill three wells in the last six years and Duthie said, “I’m at the point that we don’t have to room for new wells.”

Eventually, all those wells go dry and perhaps like Denver, Colorado Springs has an interest in the economic health of its suburbs.

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Judy Ingels and Jennifer Malenky at the ESM Jingle Bell Gala. Photo by Linda Navarro Photo by