PROJC01741 ‎(3)‎

• Contract/PO #: C153768
• Contractor Name: Lower Arkansas Water Management Association
• Contract Type: Loan
• Water District: 67
• County: Bent
• County: Prowers
• Bill Number: SB 96-124
• Loan Projects - Doc Type: Feasibility Study

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In 1993 and 1994, the company refused to honor a river call issued by the Division
Engineer and diverted water out-of-priority. For the ensuing litigation, the Division Engineer
quantified the amount of water diverted in priority in 1993, and only those volumes are reflected
in Table 5. The records for 1994 were not adjusted by the Division Engineer and are not
included in the analyses.

Irriaated Crops and Acreaae. The irrigated crops and acreage were based on interviews of
the owners in 1986 and aerial photographs (1986, Tipton). Excluding the CECC, the irrigated
acreage for the sellers totaled 2,830.7 acres. The typical cropping pattern is:

Alfalfa

Corn
Winter Wheat

Grain Sorghum

Pasture

46.3%
14.4%
4.6%
16.7%
18.0%

The CECC is water short, and therefore, the reduction in deliveries from the Highland
Canal will result in less consumptive use by CECC's shareholders. To account for the CECC
shares, the irrigated acreage under the Highland Canal was increased by 168 acres to 2,998.7
acres using the acres/shares ratio for the other sellers.

Historical Consumptive Use. A water budget procedure was performed using a monthly time
step to estimate consumptive use and stream depletions caused by the sellers' use of water.
The procedure accounts for the canal and lateral losses, application to the fields, crop
consumptive use, deep percolation, tail water and return flows. The consumptive irrigation
requirements were estimated using the modified Blaney-Criddle method (1971, USDA) and
temperature and precipitation data for Las Animas (1993, NOAA).

The historical consumptive use by the sellers averaged 4,882 acre-feet annually (1.37
acre-feet per share) for 1950 through 1993 and ranged from 1,698 acre-feet in 1964 to 7,961
acre-feet in 1983 as shown in Table 6. The historical consumptive use includes crop ET, soil
evaporation during the winter, and ET derived from canal and lateral losses. The potential net
soil evaporation rate for November through March was estimated at 3 inches but was limited to
actual applications and soil moisture. The ET from canal and lateral losses was estimated to be
5 percent of the loss. Portions of the return flows from ditch seepage, deep percolation, and tail
water are consumed by vegetation or evaporated. These additional consumptive uses were not
estimated for this investigation.

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