South Platte - Lower South Platte Wetland Initiative Phase I_Application-Void

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Water Supply Reserve Account - Grant Application Form Form Revised May 2007 4. Please provide an overview of the water project or activity to be funded including - type of activity, statement of what the activity is intended to accomplish~ the need for the activity, the problems and opportunities to be addressed, expectations of the participants, why the activity is important, the service area or geographic location, and any relevant issues etc. Please include any relevant TABOR issues that may affect the eontracting Entity. Please refer to Part 2 of eriteria and Guidance document for additional detail on information to include. This project proposal will focus on delivering high quality recharge wetlands in the lower SPR corridor. Recharge projects as part of a program to augment SPR flows through the alluvial aquifer have become a widely accepted and dependable technique for meeting the demands of water users along the river. In fact, our program has become the standard for recharge projects with wildlife and wetlands funds invested in the majority of recharge projects on the Platte. Proposal participants will provide direct diversion rights designated specifically for - recharge to meet a variety of beneficial uses corresponding to the objectives and recommendations as outlined by SWSL Water has been diverted from the SPR for anthropocentric needs since colonization more than 140 years ago. Surface rights were developed and applied via the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation. However, as technology changed and water demands grew, new systems for water storage and diversion were developed, resulting in an overappropriation of water resources for irrigation and summer time water. Over the last 40 years, a river augmentation program that retimes river flows from times of excess to times of shortage has developed and become the mainstay for addressing water shortfalls in the river. River augmentation is a complicated system that utilizes wetland recharge principles to retime water and recharge the alluvial aquifer. By diverting water from the river during spring freshets or winter runs when recharge rights or free river water is available, the water can be moved to recharge basins located off stream. The recharge basins allow water to infiltrate the alluvial aquifer, where it will slowly return underground to the river channel. Return times have been thoroughly modeled and continuously updated to assure that recharge water returns to the river at the required time. By operating in this fashion, less senior water rights can operate out of priority without causing injury to senior right holders. River management under this system has permitted several junior water rights holders to continue operating legally. Without river augmentation municipal, industrial, and agricultural operations would be severely and negatively impacted. Recharge projects are expensive undertakings for any entitiy. Ducks Unlimited and our partners have always understood that recharge wetlands provided significant benefit to migrating and wintering birds, but only recently had evidence from scientific studies. Although a few enterprises and landowners have built projects on their own, most have some wildlife funds associated with them. The vast majority of projects in the lower SPR have been built by DU, PFW, or the NRCS' Wetland Reserve Program. Recent studies conducted by the RMBO and CDOW underline the value of recharge projects for wildlife. Winter surveys of sites in the project area indicated that older recharge projects regularly hosted 10,000-16,000 waterfowl daily (CDOW, 2005). Spring surveys conducted by RMBO indicated that over 10,000 waterfowl and nearly 6,000 shorebirds were observed. Even more compelling is that over 20 species of waterfowl and 27 species of shorebirds were observed, making the species richness found on recharge wetlands attractive on a national scale (RMBO, 2006). Early in DU's program efforts, we joined NCWCD, LSPWCD, and SPLRG to develop the Tamarack Recharge Project. This project is the centerpiece of Colorado's contribution to the PRRP. Seven years after 15