20b

• Board Meeting Date: 9/18/2007
• Description: CWCB Director's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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"-' ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN "-'

GROUNDWATER WORKSHOP SET SEPT. 27-28: A workshop this month will look at
issues surrounding groundwater management policy in Colorado.

Shortages of groundwater in the heavily developed Denver Basin, new efforts to use aquifers for
storage, recharging depleted aquifers and legal or policy constraints to groundwater development
are all issues that have made headlines in recent years.

The workshop is scheduled Sept. 27-28 at the Doubletree Hotel in Colorado Springs. Speakers
include U.S. Department of Natural Resources Director Harris Shennan, Colorado Supreme
Court Justice Gregory Hobbs and key Colorado lawmakers. Academic, legal and technical
experts are also expected.

The workshop is sponsored by the EI Paso County Water Authority, Colorado Springs Utilities,
Brown and Caldwell, Aqua Engineering, Western Resource Advocates and R.W. Beck. The need
for the conference grew out of an Arkansas Basin Roundtable committee meeting on
groundwater issues.

The Arkansas Basin Roundtable is one of the nine stakeholder groups set up by the state
Legislature in 2005 to start looking at how to solve water issues river basin by river basin Nand
then to help basins cooperate with one another to enact those solutions.

The basin roundtable voted to use some of their allocation of state funds from the Water Supply
Reserve Account to put on the conference.

To register, call Mary Lou Smith at 970-229-9668 or e-mailmlsmith({ll.aquaengr.com.

AURORA WATER DEAL TAPS INTO WORRIES: A new deal the city has reached to
secure water from the Pueblo Reservoir for the next 40 years is good news for local residents but
could be bad news for communities along the lower Arkansas River Valley.

Aurora has agreed in principle with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on a 40-year contract to
store and purchase up to 10,000 acre-feet of water - about 5 percent of the city's water usage -
from the Pueblo Reservoir each year.

Final wording is being hashed out on the agreement, which has been on a year-to-year basis.

The deal comes just weeks after the city broke ground on its $800 million Prairie Waters project,
a water purification project that will provide up to 3.3 billion gallons of water to the city annually
starting in 2010.

Aurora has been getting a quarter of its annual water supply - 55,000 to 60,000 acre-feet - from
water rights it has in the Arkansas River Basin. The water is stored at the Pueblo Reservoir and
several mountain impounds.

Flood Protection. Water Project Planning and Finance. Sn-eam and Lake Protection
Water Supply Protection. Conservation Planning