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<br />[-:~". " i -:: <br /> <br />I:" <br /> <br />[' . <br />, :- ;j <br /> <br />1%1 <br /> <br />. "!". 1 ~ R <br /> <br />GROUND WATER, LIABILITY OR ASSET, CHILD .',-"-, .": <br />OR FOUNDLING DELIVERED BY DAVID J. MILLER, <br />ATTORNEY, GREELEY, COLORADO TO <br />FOUR STATES IRRIGATION COUNClL\AND THE UPPER <br />MISSOURI RIVER BASIN WATER USERS ASSOCIATION <br />Denver, Colorado <br />January 13, 1961 <br /> <br />Ground water is a natural resource. Its existence is general, <br />its use widespread, its contribution to our economy great: its possibi- <br />lities for service to mankind immense. Once the ugling duckling of <br />natural resources, it may well be the proud swan in basin wide compre- <br />hensive planning. <br /> <br />Ground water irrigates five million acres in the high plains of <br />Texas and provides millions of acre feet of water needed for California. <br />It supplies supplemental irrigation for hundreds of thousands of acres of <br />Kansas and Nebraska. It supplies more water for dDmestic, industrial <br />and agricultural use in the South Platte Valley of Colorado, than all <br />prl'ljects, present or proposed, of the Bureau of Reclamation or the City <br />and County of Denver. Ground water must be given a place in basin wide <br />resource planning. <br /> <br />Many believe that ground water represents the greatest single <br />potential for wat,er resource development in the west. In Colorado's <br />~atershort South Platte Basin where a fast growing population must have <br />more water for its people, its industry, and its farms, we have 25 mil- <br />lion acre feet of ground water that could be used to fit into our plans for <br />basinwide resource development. In the Arkansas Valley, 11 million acre <br />feet are available. In the San Luis Valley the innumerable aquifers have <br />stored some two billion acre feet of water. In the high plains of eastern <br />Colorado, there are 150 million acre feet of ground water. Not all of <br />this water is recoverable but it is there. Only a fraction of the rain <br />that falls in Colorado, in the west or in the nation reaches our streams. <br />Nature stores much of it in ground water reservoirs. <br /> <br />It is not my purpose here as a lawyer to read a learned paper on <br />ground water law. But, I want to point out that law in ground water, as in <br />other resource fields, provides the means for social engineering and <br />sound resource development. Law is one of the servants of mankind, <br />not its master. This is true whether the field be constitutional rights, <br />civil rights, business law or irrigation. Law is one of the tools, one <br />