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• Board Meeting Date: 1/22/2008
• Description: CWCB Legislative Priorities and Recommendations - Instream Flow Lessor Protection
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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November 13, 2007

CO 80202

,no L"R1ME1\ STRUT, SUITE 300, DENVER,

Colorado Water COIiservation Board
1313 Sherman Street, Room 721
Denver, Colorado 80203

Proposed Instream Flow Program Legislation

Dear Colorado Water Conservation Board members:

Re:

The State of Colorado has a long history of recognizing the importance of instream
water uses in addition to more traditional water uses. The placement of an instream flow
program in the hands of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (/CWCB") was the clearest
statement of that recognition. Since the creation of the instream now program, all of us in
Colorado who care about water have had the opportunity to see instteam flow uses fall
comfortably-with well-defined, decreed, administrable, and defensible parameters-into place
in Colorado's prior appropriation system. Among numerous other benefil<;, the instteam flow
program has much to contribute to continuing Colorado's preeminence as the fishing and
recreation capital of the United States.

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To accomplish the CWCB's mission to protect, maintain, and improve streamflows, the
instream flow program has two important arrows in its quiver: (1) new appropriations; and (2)
water right acquisitions. As most of you know, nearly all of Colorado's river basins are over-
appropriated, leaving little room for the development of new, junior water rights. Those that
can be appropriated have watel. available to them infrequently and in inconsistent amounts.
This is so for any new, junior water right in over-appropriated stream systems, whether the
intended use is agricultural, mwlidpal, industrial, or non-consumptive. When water is
available to these new, junior water rights, water is generally available to most water rights in
the system and, as a result, to the stream system itself. These times-the times of plenty-are
npt the times of crisis. We all know that the times of crisis are the shortages. During times of
shortage, junior water rights aren't satisfied. Yet, times of shortage are the most critical times
for Colorado's riverL.l1e ecosystem.s.

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With drought as an increasing linlitation on the efficacy of new ~tteam flow
appropriations, it has become critically important to focus on the second arrow in the CWCB's
quiver: acquisitions. Acquisitions are an exb'emely important mecl1anism to allow the CWCB to
continue protecting, maintaining, and improving streamflows in critical areas of the state. The
acquisitions program has at least two bel'lefits that are not available to the appropriations
program. First, the acquisitions program matches willing sellers (the current water right
holder) with a willing buyer (the CWCB). As a result, it represents a market-based approach to
protection of streamflow levels. Second, it provides the CWCB with access to more senior water

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