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l'l.~"j; ,~ "" 4' J, ! Plan of Development Denver to the State line, appeared before the Colorado Water Conservation Board at a regular meeting in Denver and requested the Board to reinitiate studies leading toward the construction of channel storage on the South Platte River. The Board agreed to this request and in the years 1959-1963 it furnished $82,950 to the Bureau of Reclamation for further studies of the Narrows Unit. Because of local interest in an upstream site, the Bureau of Reclamation was requested to make a hydrologic and cost comparison of the Narrows and Weld County (Hardin) Reservoir sites. The upstream Weld County site is about 23 airline miles from the Narrows site. In February 1963, the Bureau documented the results of its hydrologic studies in a publication entitled "Site Selection Presenta- tion to the; South Platte Steering Committee." The essence of the con- clusions tiet forth in the presentation were to the effect that neither site had a clear-cut hydrologic advantage over the other site, under either historic or expected 1990 flow conditions. Storage at the Narrows site provides a more adequate supply for the lower basin while storage at the Weld County site provides a more adequate supply for the midsection of the basin. The hydrologic conclusions drawn by the Bureau were studied extensivelY by the staff of the Colorado Water Conservation Board which indicated no major disagreement on the hydrologic studies. The studies disclosed that a reservoir at the Weld County site would reduce annual valley water ohortages about 2,500 acre-feet more than the Narrows site under the present time level and would reduce shortages 9,000 acre_feet more annually under the 1990 time level. Offsetting the economic advantages of this additional water supply at Weld County was the fact that the flood control benefits would be greater at the Narrows s:L te. It appeared that the combined purely economic values of water conservati.on and flood control at either site, for all practical purposes, were identical. A selection of one site in preference to the other, based upon combined hydro10gi.c and flood control considera- tions, was therefore eliminated. The remaining major item in the site selection was the matter of comparative costs. In a report entitled "Site Selection Report, Narrows Unit - Colorado" dated September 1961, the Bureau estimated the total cost of the Narrows site at $38,334,000 and the cost of the Weld County site at $45,459,000. At the time of that estimate detailed geologic investigations were available on the Narrows site, 28