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. '001.157 20 The parcelling out of the Juniper rights to existing and future uses could be accomplished for each and every junior water right in the basin. Alternatively, portions of the Juniper right could be transferred to existing and proposed reservoirs so that they, in turn, could supply those future needs unable to divert in the face of a call by the instream fiow. The former approach entails potentially lengthy Water Court proceedings due to the large number of rights that would be involved in change cases. The second approach would presumably entail less lengthy proceedings but would require that the reservoir sites chosen be capable of supporting diligence proceedings on the rights to insure that they remained viable for future use. The issues of numerous change cases and maintaining diligence would be reduced under the second mechanism sin(,c it would not be necessary to involve specific water rights or identify specific water storage sites. However, the question would arise as to how large the subordination of the Juniper rights should be to adequately protect future development needs Diligence Issues If a portion of the Juniper rights were to be transCerred to existing and potential reservoir sites, it will be important that those sites be hydrologically adequate. This means that the sites must provide sufficient yield to meet future demands and be located where subsequent transfers to other sites, if such became necessary, would not be unduly limited by inflows at the initial site. These considerations favor sites with higher inflows and located higher in the basin; direct releases [0 meet demands are possible only if storage is located above those demands. It will also generally be easier to transfer points of diversion downstream to locations with greater inOow than to transfer them upstream to locations with lesser inflow. It will also be necessary that any sites so selected pass tests of technical, economic, and environmental feasibility. This favors sites with good construction charaCteristics, low development costs, and minimal permitting and environmental mitigation requirements. Generally speaking, enlargement of existing reservoirs will appear more favorable in this light than development of new reservoirs. Subordination A critical issue with the subordination mechanism is the quantification of the proper size of the subordination. The Juniper rights are subject to several subordination agreements, the largest of which is quantified at 65,000 af of consumption. In order to determine whether this is adequate for the future it would be necessary to d(~:termine how much depletion currently takes place under rights junior to Juniper. A very preliminary estimate of current junior consumption above Juniper Canyon has been prepared by the staff of the Division 6 Engineer (Holt, pers. comm., 1991). This estimate, which is based on a number of unverified assumptions, is that 36,000 af of existing basin depletions occur under rights junior to the Juniper rights. When future consumption (projected in Task 2) of 38,000 af is added to this estimate the total exceeds the 65,000 af subordination by 8,000 af. If all future consumption is assumed to occur under junior rights (rather than under senior conditional rights), this suggests that the subordination would need to be enlarged somewhat from its current value in order to accomm~date consumption. If certain rights are to be excluded from the subordination (e.g., bascn exports or uses that exceed the subordination limit), a selective subordination situation might develop. The State Engineer's guidelines for administering such a selective subordination are not well-defined.