BOARDSEP03

• Board Meeting Date: 9/22/2003
• Description: Petition to Enforce the Provisions of the Blue River Decree
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Other

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003272

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I. SUMMARY OF DISPUTE

1. Petitioners are repres entati ves of West Slope beneficiaries of the Colorado Big-
Thompson Project (the ""C-BT Project" or the ""Project"), a transmountain
diversion project that diverts water from the headwaters of the Colorado River
for use on the East Slope of Colorado. The United States, through the
Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation C"Reclamation") has been
determined in previous decisions in these Consolidated Cases to be a trustee
responsible for the operation and maintenance of the C-BT Project to secure
Petitioners' and other C- BT Project beneficiaries' rights therein. This Court has
previously adjudicated the rights and obligations of Petitioners and other parties
to these Consolidated Cases, and has retained jurisdiction to interpret and
enforce the provisions of those rulings and Senate Document 80.

2. This dispute centers around one of the features of the C-BT Project known as
Green Mountain Reservoir, a large reservoir located on the Blue River south of
Kremmling, Colorado. Senate Document 80, which was incorporated into the C-
BT Proj ect authorizing legislation and sets forth requirements for the
construction and operation of the Project, required Reclamation to construct
Green Mountain Reservoir as a condition of allowing the diversions of C-BT
Project water to the East Slope. Water stored in Green Mountain Reservoir is to
provide replacement in Western Colorado for water diverted to the East Slope by
the C-BT Project C"replacement pool"), and additional compensatory irrigation
and domestic supplies for West Slope water users, including Petitioners
("compensatory pool"). In order to meet these requirements, Senate Document
80 requires Reclamation to maintain Green Mountain Reservoir with a usable
capacity of 152,000 acre feet of water. The replacement pool is required to be
52,000 acre feet in capacity and the compensatory pool is required to be 100,000
acre feet in capacity.

3. Although Green Mountain Reservoir has an actual capacity of approximately
154,000 acre feet, the usable capacity is less than the minimum required by
Senate Document 80 because Reclamation maintains approximately 7,000 acre
feet of the total capacity as unusable "dead storage."

4. In Summer 2002, Reclamation unilaterally declared that it would restrict the
amount of water released from Green Mountain Reservoir to an amount
significantly less than that to which Petitioners are legally entitled. Reclamation
claimed that, in addition to the existing 7,000 acre foot '"dead pool," another
20,000 acre feet of water must be held in Green Mountain Reservoir to prevent a
reactivation of an historical landslide adjacent to the Reservoir, in and around
the Town of Heeney (the ""Heeney Slide"). This restriction reduced the usable
capacity of Green Mountain Reservoir to only 127,000 acre feet, far less than the
152,000 acre feet required by Senate Document 80.

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