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Headwaters recreation area is well in advance of $60 million annually. I'll throw out the numbers we always use: fishermen spend about $33 a day; private boaters spend about $37 a day; commercial boaters and people using commercial boating $73 a day. There's an asterisk there so I don't know if that includes beer money or not. And then $20 for all other activities. Parks is currently in phase five of a six-phase capital development program with expenditures in excess of $6 million dollars at the headwaters park. This money is derived from various government agencies. Getting into an area that I hope is a little more technically my area, at all of these parks our visitation is directly related to water. I am happy to say that I think we have a deal worked out now so that we will be able to store at Trinidad Reservoir an additiona111 ,500 acre-feet this year for recreation and newly allocated space by the core. We will keep our fingers crossed on that. Because water is so important, we at State Parks have become very active in the water community along the Arkansas. Historically high priorities for water use has either been agricultural, municipal or industrial. If you look at the priorities for water projects, water use in the valley, if you have the patience and the time you will go through all the priorities and then finally you will hit recreation, which is usually right down there at the bottom. But I think that is going to be changing quite a bit as it already has changed quite a bit in the last ten years. State Parks will have to adapt and plan for that change. Water leasing, purchasing and most importantly working cooperatively with the water community and water users will become important goals for us at Parks in the months and years to come, especially our role in the water community and working cooperatively with water users. This past year the Arkansas River Coordinating Committee proved to be a valuable forum for us at State Park to converse, share, argue, and stomp our feet with other valley water users. That kind of dialog is good for US and I hope it is good for the users as well. We expect to use these discussions as a base to expand our cooperation throughout the coming months. We fully realize that not everyone agrees that the highest value should be recreation, but that's O.K. I'm reminded of a complaint that we received from some of the downstream folks saying that because of Parks they see a lot more license plates from a partiCular state. I won't mention that state but it sounds a lot like Texas, and I guess the viewpoint was that all of these tourism and recreational demands were not good for the valley. I guess my answer to that is it is just a matter of perspective. If you are a shop owner in Buena Vista, then perhaps those Texas license plates aren't so bad. Heavy out of state use also has caused state parks some problems. It reminds me of this past summer at Pueblo state park. I was riding around with the park ranger and we pulled over a truck pulling a boat. I will say the truck was from Arizona this time because I'm from Arizona. The park ranger went up to the cab of the truck and politely declined the cold brew the guy offered and proceeded to discuss with him that while it wasn't illegal in the State of Colorado to tow a boat it was advisable to use a trailer. Needless to say, the beer offer was withdrawn quickly. The sad part about it was he lost his water skier about two miles up the road. True story. But the point is, recreation plays a major economic role. It doesn't matter what part you talk about it has an impact, and that impact is often far-reaching. I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite water expert stories. There was a farmer who was driving a load of water experts in the back of his pickup across the Pueblo dam road. The farmer lost control of the pickup and it fell off the dam and sank to the bottom of the lake, but fortunately it landed upright. The farmer was able to swim out, get to the top and get to the shore. And he waited and he waited. There were no water experts. Fmally, one popped up, another one popped up and another one popped up. they swam to the shore where the farmer was frantic. "Where have you guys been? What took you so long?" The water expert spoke up and said, "We would have been here sooner but we tried like hell to get that tailgate down." Think about it. Arkansas River Basin Water Forum 36 itA River of Dreams and Realities"