Rio Grande - Romero-Guadalupe Channel Rectification Project_Application

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Water Supply Reserve Account – Grant Application Form Form Revised May 200 7 _______________________________________ Strategic Plan , and has plans to establish a “ Unified Rio Grande Water - Quality Monitoring Program ” from the river’s headwaters in the San Juan Mounta ins to the Colorado/New Mexico border , including the Conejos River. CWCD looks forward to collaborating with that project. We anticipate that this Romero - Guadalupe stabilization project will aid us in gathering timely and accurate water quality data on th e Conejos. NRCS technical and funding assistance enables our irrigation and ditch companies and the Conejos Water Conservation District to build local capacity and to support the Interbasin Compact Committee and the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable’s objectiv e of developing a grass - roots process for understanding our basin’s needs. We understand that NRCS’ process also includes consultations with the the Army Corps of Engineers. D. L. Rosgen, P.H. has performed numerous studies on the structures we propose. They have been installed on 14 rivers with bankfull widths varying from 9m (Lower Blanco River in Southwestern Colorado) to 150m (Bitterroot River in Northwestern Montana) and slopes varying from 0.05 to .0003 and in bed material ranging from cobble and gr avel to sand bed streams. Since 1986, Rosgen has restored and monitored a wide variety of stream types involving over 48 km of rivers, and has also evaluated the performance of various structures following major floods. This monitoring has resulted in the development, implementation and assessment of the Cross - Vane, W - Weir and J - Hook vane structures. . Additional Information – If you feel you would like to add any additional pertinent information please feel free 8 to do so here. Evaluation Criteria to Assess Success of This Water Project: A question that has not been asked is “How will you evaluate the success of this project?” We feel this is an important question and one which others at the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable probably encounter with simila r stabilization projects. First, d ue to technical and funding constraints, our evalu ation criteria will probably be more subjective at first, evolving, if needed, to empirical and analytical methods as we move through th e project. Second, NRCS has sponsore d many channel stabilization pro jects throughout the nation and, if required, we will have their evaluation expertise after completion of this project. But we have found an interesting third alternative, recommended by David L. Rosgen, creator of the J - hoo k technology which we will use. He described an emerging streambank stabilization evaluation system in a lecture last year in Nevada ( PROCEEDINGS of the Eighth Federal Interagency Sedimentation Conference (8thFISC), April2 - 6, 2006, Reno, NV, USA ) . This sys tem offers us a third way of assessing our success, which, if needed, we could also resort to. We feel it might be of value to others on our Roundtable, so we enclose his review, titled FLOWSED/POWERSED – PREDICTION MODELS FOR SUSPENDED AND BEDLOAD TRANSP ORT . Water in this desert region has never been taken for granted, and the natural laws governing its production and manmade laws controlling its use have never been taken so seriously as in 2002. Once believed to have limitless supplies of underground w ater and regarded as the Southwest’ s last great water reserve , the Valley is now faced with the true realities of its water limitati ons by the worst drought in recorded history. Exactly what the ramifications of a prolonged drought will be for home use, ag riculture, cities, wildlife, tourism, and all other economic and social sectors including new or planned development, is not fully known at this time. There is no greater issue to the Valley than water, and the past struggles to fight off water mining and exportation by AWDI and Stockman’s proved that this is the one issue that can pull together all of the Valley’s population and diversified interests. A question now remains as to whether this same common cause and level of cooperation can be focused on the new threat to the Valley’s existence by drought and water loss. (SLV Development Resources CEDS Study) It should be noted that ditch companies such as ours are not responsible for the condition of the Conejos channel n or its 16