WSP12116 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

I I I I I I I I I I I ~ f^\: r< r" R~~~f~ CAPACITY AND YIELD Ruedi Reservior has an active storage capacity of 101,280 acre feet and 1087 acre feet of inactive and dead storage. As set forth in the Federal Reg- ister notice of December 9, 1980, which announced that negotiations for the sale of water from Ruedi Reservior would be initiated with Colony Shale Oil Project, the Water and Power Resources Service has determined that the firm annual yield of Ruedi Reservoir averages 77,800 acre feet. Of that amount up to 28,300 acre feet could be used for replacement of Fryin9pan-Arkansas Project diversions to protect senior western slope water rights. This leaves an additional 49,500 acre feet available for municipal, industrial and other water uses to be sold and deli vered pursuant to contract. The 49,500 acre feet of no-shortage annual yield was determined by the Water and Power Resources Service in 1975 using a period of study of 1949 to 1964 and conservative assumptions including: (1) the reservoir would be permitted one "paper fill" per year due to expected over-appropriation of the Colorado River Basin (a "paper fill" is the capacity minus the end-of-year content) and (2) diversions to the Arkansas River would deplete Ruedi Reservoir infow by 8100 acre feet per year. Two other studies of Ruedi yield by the Water and Power Resources Service using other assumptions produced similar estimates of yield. Therefore, since these no-shortage estimates of yield are about eight times the projected requirements of Colony Shale Oil Project, no further consideration will be given to reservoir yield in this study. RESERVOIR OPERATION The Ruedi Reservoir is operated by the Water and Power Resources Service of the Department of the Interior. Operating plans for the reservoir are des- cribed in House Document 130, (87th Congress, 1st Session) "Operating Prin- ciples Fryingpan-Arkansas Project," adopted by the State of Colorado on April 30, 1959. As described in House Document 130, minimum flows esta- blished for maintenance of fish life on the Fryingpan River below the con- fluence of Rocky Fork Creek just downstream from Ruedi dam are 110 cfs from May 1 to October 30, and 39 cfs from November 1 to April 30. The operating plan requires releases from Ruedi Reservoir to be either minimum fish bypass flows or undepleted inflows to the reservoir, whichever is less. In addi- tion to maintaining flows for fish, releases from the reservoir are made to provide flood control storage space. (3)