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• Board Meeting Date: 5/21/2008
• Description: IWMD Section - Alternative Agricultural Water Transfer Methods - Arkansas and South Platte Basins Competitive Grant Program
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

Descriation of the Technical, Institutional and Leal Elements.
overview. The Lager Arkansas Malley Super Ditch Company will create an
institutional and legal mechanism whereby irrigators who voluntarily forego irrigation can
lease water to municipal ar other water users. Irrrigatars will incorporate an independent
Super Ditch Company to lease their water, made available from forgoing historical irrigation,
to municipalities and other water users.
Technical details. The water leases may take various farms, including long term
leases, interruptible water supply agreements, and water banking, as the Super Ditch
Company negotiates with water users to meet their water needs. The leases will be uuritten
an uniform farms to facilitate the sale and transfer of the underlying ditch company shares,
but the Leases will take into account the varying yields of each ditch company's shares.
Ul~ater leases will be far specific terns of years, and binding upon bath the
municipallwater user-lessees and the irrigator-lessors, their successors and assigns. The
leases will constitute a legal encumbrance upon the ditch company shares leased by the
irrigators to the Super Ditch Company, and constitute a continuing obligation of the owner,
assignor, ar successor of the ditch company shares. In this manner, the leases will provide
certainty to the municipal~water user lessees. Llndaubtedly, there will be a variety of lease
terms necessary to meet the differing needs of lessees, but it is expected that leases will run
far as long as 40 years with a right of renewal. 1lunicipalities have demonstrated their
camfv~ with such lease periods through contracts with the Bureau of Reclamation. It is, of
course impossible to predict whether climate change, domestic energy demands, and~or
agricultural economics will support irrigated agriculture any farther into the future, a question
of paramount importance to the duration of the program.
1lyater rights. The rights to be leased through the Super Ditch Car~pany will be
water rights that are diverted from ar stared an the mainstem of the Arkansas River and its
tributaries exclusive of Fountain Creeks at ar below Puebla Dam and above John Martin
Reservoir and located sa that the leased water can be delivered tv municipalities and other
water users without prohibitive transit losses. The water rights will be in the farm of stock
held in ditch and reservoir companies diverting ar staring water from the mainstem and its
tributaries, and may include the Bessemer Ditch, Rocky Ford High Line Canal, ~xfard
Farmers Ditch, Otero Canal, Catlin Canal, Holbrook Canal, the Fart Lyon Canal, and other
ditches provided that such leasing is permitted by the ditch company's articles of
incorporation and bylaws}. The Super Ditch Company gill lease ditch company shares from
Participating Irrigators taking into account their varying "yields" as determined by the ditch
companies' water rights priorities and historic consumptive use, Shares in different ditch
companies will lease far different amounts because of varying yields; more reliable shares,
such as those that were not called in ~g0~, fetching a higher lease price than less reliable
shares.
Specific information an water sources, location, yield, hydrologic variation, extent of
development and water rights is available in HDR' Preliminary engineering Study,
Rotational Land Fallowing-1~later Leasing Program Nav, ~aDl~.