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Ms. Maryanne C. Bach 12/28/98 Page 4 000670 System Refinements. Park Conversions. Within the system refinement category of the near-term supply strategy is the conversion of parks and open spaces currently irrigated with treated water to raw water supplies. Reusable transmountain return flow can be used to replace existing demands at those areas identified as being feasible conversion candidates. Two projects are actively being evaluated for feasibility. The projects would be implemented, in part, with money available to Denver Water from the City and County of Denver as a result of Denver Water's purchase of the Moffat Tunnel in 1997. As part of previous raw water park irrigation projects, Denver continues to pursue adjudication of water rights on Cherry Creek within the City and County of Denver to irrigate three areas along the creek with raw water provided by alluvial wells. These water rights are being sought in Case Nos. 89CWI98, 93CW033, and 93CWllO, Water Division 1. Reusable return flows will be the replacement water for these wells. Lawn Irrigation Return Flow. Denver has initiated the first phase of its efforts to quantify Colorado River return flows from the irrigation of lawns within its service area by commissioning a scoping study. This study will develop a work plan that will be used to guide the activities of Denver's consultants and in-house staff for the next five years. Phase I is to be completed by April 1999. Phase II, the Work Plan, will be implemented over the next five years, with an additional five years contemplated for negotiations with other water users on the South Platte to obtain a water court decree permitting the legal use of the quantified flows. Once quantified and decreed, these return flows will provide Denver an additional source of water for exchange to its raw water diversion and storage facilities or for delivery to other non-potable uses in the metro area. . Downstream Storage. Also as part of the System Refinement portion of the near term strategy, Denver is pursuing storage on the South Platte River downstream of Denver to enhance the yield of its municipal water system. This storage would recapture and regulate Denver's reusable return flow presently relinquished to the river due to the lack of timely upstream exchange potential or demand. After storage, these return flows would be released to the river when upstream exchange potential exists. Additionally, downstream storage will be needed to augment the Nonpotable Reuse Project when there is legally insufficient reusable return flow available to the reuse plant. As Denver pursued the acquisition of suitable storage sites, which are principally mined gravel pits, it encountered several other entities interested in cooperatively developing such sites. Denver is actively discussing this with some of these entities and has completed appraisals, surveys, geotechnical investigations, and environmental evaluations for some of the potential sites. It has completed the