09d

• Board Meeting Date: 3/18/2008
• Description: CWCB Director's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

reasonable degree; Applicants' ability to describe the administration of Vallecito Reservoir and that
Applicants' refill claim is for water already decreed in Case W-563.
SAN JUAN PUBLIC LANDS DRAFT LAND MANAGEMENT PLAN -The San Juan Public
Lands -"Plan for the Future" is a long-term planning effort by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the San Juan Basin of southwestern Colorado. The San Juan
Public Lands Center, as the joint USFS/BLM management unit is known, is the first governmental unit of
this type to conduct such a joint long-range planning effort. This plan will address the management of
over 2.5 million acres of National Forest and BLM lands. As part of this planning effort, a "Government-
to-Government Roundtable" was formed in 2005 to lead discussions on water issues in the plan revision
process, and has met several times to discuss the plan revision process.
On December 14, 2007, the San Juan Public Lands Center released a draft Revised Land Management
Plan guiding long-term management for some 2.4 million acres of BLM and National Forest lands in
southwestern Colorado. An accompanying draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) offers four
alternatives proposing differing scenarios for multiple-use management of the San Juan's BLM and
National Forest lands. An oil and gas leasing availability analysis is also included as part of the draft EIS.
The Draft Plan and EIS address numerous issues, including balancing management between maintaining
working forest and rangelands and retaining core undeveloped lands, providing recreation and travel
management within a sustainable ecological framework, managing special area designations and unique
landscapes, and managing impacts from oil and gas leasing and development. The four alternatives
outline different management scenarios varying by land allocations in response to issues and concerns.
Public comments on the draft plan and EIS were due on March 12, 2008. Both the Southwestern Water
Conservation District and the CWCB submitted requests for an extension of time to submit comments
until May 12, 2008. The Government-to-Government Roundtable will resume its meetings to discuss
the documents and develop comments. CWCB staff will coordinate with the Southwestern Water
Conservation Districts and other entities in developing comments.
~YAMPA/WHITE RIVER BASINS
WHITE RIVER SURFACE WATER MODELING REFRESH -Due to procurement delays,
the updating and refresh of the CDSS White River surface water model did not start until late February. It
is anticipated that this delay will not be an issue in the completion of the Colorado River Water
Availability Study. The major updating and refreshing of the White River surface water model is
associated the calibration phase and updating of documentation.
2005 WESTERN SLOPE IRRIGATED ACREAGE REFRESH -Staff has being working at
refreshing irrigated parcel boundaries for the 2005 irrigation season once again using Landsat satellite
imagery. Parcel delineation has been completed for the San Juan basin. The Yampa/White, Gunnison and
Colorado are in different phases of completion. Once the delineation is done for all western slope basins,
then remote sensing will be done to get crop type. This effort is top priority for Carolyn Fritz, our GIS
coordinator.
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