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, .<.., (;) C) ...... W ....:I THE BIRTH OF COLORADO-BIG THOMPSON 69 :'-, baffling variation to the law relative to acre feet allotment, in order to fit our irrigation and domestic water needs. We provided for a special benefit assessment lien. The District itself was a quasi- municipality, like a school district. .. We got the Water Conservancy Act drafted in the winter of 1936. Sponsored by every Northern Colorado legislator, it was in- troduced in the Colorado legislature early in 1937. It took a lot of negotiating to get it through, but after some changes, it passed in April and was sig'ned on May 12, 1937. 'rhis act set up the seven-county district, with a basis similar to a city water system. It provided a general tax to be levied on all property for the benefit of making the added water supply avail- able, and a contractual special asseSBment for actual water used. Its allotment liens were not involuntary, but were .a matter of contract. Next, the act had to be tested in the Supreme Court of Colo- rado to make it acceptable security in order to induce the govern- ment to authorize a multi-million dollar loan. The Supreme Court decision was .handed down in May, 193'8. .Justice William Lee Knous wrote the favorable opinion, since adopted in Utah and Nebraska. Our efforts in 1936 for congressional appropriation were de- featcd by Congressman Ed Taylor, one of the Western Slope leaders, who had opposed our project from its first announcement to 1937. In a meeting with men from the Western Slope in Greeley in Janu- ary, 1934, we sought to allay their fears by offering to share the water. vVe asked that they join us in the project. Other meetings at Grand Junction and Denver followed with no result. The repre- sentatives wanted, without cost to vVestern Slope users, reservoirs built on a ratio of one acre foot to them for each acre foot for trans- mountain diversion. Construction costs made that load too much for our project to bear On December 16, 1936, Charles Hansen, Thomas A. Nixon and I addressed a letter to Frank Delaney of Glenwood Springs, spokesman for the West Slope intere,sts, proposing a replacement which would concurrently substitute other water for any diversion being made by our project when the flow at Glenwood Springs Shoshoni Power Plant should fall below 1250 second feet. Delaney answered in ten days that VIr est Slope leaders had been meeting and would like to work out some satisfactory compromise. I-Ie sug- gested a four-man committee from each slope. The meeting was arranged. Conferences began on January 1, 1937, in Denver, and extended over that week. In addition to Delancy, the VlT est Slope committee consisted of Silmon Smith of Grand Junction, Judge C. H. Stewart of Delta and Clifford Stone of Gunnison, legislator-elect. Hansen, Dille, Nixon and I constituted our committee. Preston and Bunger, Recla-