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<br />Don Jones - Lived in Fort Morgan since 1978, licensed real estate broker, farm <br />manager and owner <br />Attended the meeting in Wiggins, Supports the doctrine of prior <br />appropriation, but should not revert back to the way things were in the late 1800s <br />and early 1900s, need to fix water system and make it better, Asked the Task <br />Force to consider the following: streamline the Water Court system and allow the <br />State Engineer's Office to manage the river; make the system more efficient; <br />need the State Engineer's Office to keep records and hire more staff; tired of <br />paying attorneys; put wells drilled prior to 1969 back into the priority system; <br />consider forgiving past depletions for wells in existing or applied for augmentation <br />plan, but only wells that are in an existing plan, The past cannot be changed, <br />Where is the water going to come from to cover the past depletions? Find a <br />system to go forward from here, Need to encourage development of additional <br />storage, additional augmentation recharge sites, more finances to improve these <br />projects including canals and reservoirs, Bring reservoirs back to capacity, they <br />are silted in; off-stream storage and diversions need to be funded instead of on- <br />stream reservoirs; need more augmentation projects, <br /> <br />Bob Longenbaugh - Provided new material to the Task Force (handouts) <br />There are many other causes that have reduced return flows to the South <br />Platte and he discussed some of those, There are observation well data on <br />irrigation wells and there are historical publications that provide that data, He <br />stated when the records are looked at, that Mother Nature does not support <br />depletions going out and hydrographs show that spring to spring measurements <br />are almost identically the same for the wells along the South Platte, Mother <br />Nature brings system back into equilibrium, Depletions impacts only 12-18 <br />months and not years, They are higher in the fall due to deep percolation of <br />water; measurements in the fall in pumped wells are higher than in the spring, <br />Water levels in wells were the same except one area, depletions and drawdowns <br />have reversed, Encouraged the Task Force to look at this because water tables <br />do not support the depletions; phreatophytes consume water and brings Mother <br />Nature to a balance every spring, Has a list of 12 items (p, 3) which he believes <br />that are significant that reduced the return flows to the river, some are: <br />phreatophyte growth has increased; lined gravel pits do not allow return flows to <br />the river; increased on-farm irrigation efficiency resulted in increased <br />consumptive use results in thousands of acre-feet of decreased return flows, <br />Return flow concept is not status quo, it will change, Drought of 2002 brought a <br />wake-up call. Need to use the aquifer, need to pump it down for more storage; <br />need to manage the resource, The wells vs, surface water was the issue in <br />1960s; pump the water and put it back in the ditch, The system today is broken, <br />wells cannot pump in their own priority, Need to look at the hydrographs within 1 <br />~ miles of the river, Never use a finite-difference model unless it s calibrated <br />and verified, Don't get bogged down over methodologies, the overall objective is <br />maximum utilization of all the citizens of Colorado. Need to manage the total <br /> <br />- 8 - <br />