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Northern High Plains Basin. Issuance of permits in NHP Basin slowed during the 1980s and essentially ceased by 1990. The Colorado Ground Water Commission recognized that there was limited recharge to the Ogallala Aquifer in the basin relative to the large amount of water in storage in the aquifer and authorized controlled mining of ground water in the basin based on a rate of depletion of 40% over 25 years. This was later amended to be 40% over 100 years. In 1974, the Colorado Supreme Court confirmed that the NHP Basin groundwater met the definition of designated basin water in the 1965 Act when it ruled that ground water taking over a century to reach a surface stream was not part of the water subject to appropriation under the Colorado Constitution and could be managed separately as designated ground water.2 2. History of the Interstate Litigation Due to the Lundvall ruling, both the State Engineer and groundwater users believed that NHP Basin withdrawals from the aquifer were not subject to the Republican River Compact; which on its face seemed limited to diversions that affected the flow of the Republican River. In the 1980's however, Kansas became concerned that well development in Nebraska may interfere with its ability to fully utilize its compact entitlement. In the 1990's Kansas attempted to persuade Nebraska and Colorado to adjust the Republican River compact accounting to reflect groundwater impacts, but there was no consensus between the states. In 1998, Kansas filed an original action in the United States Supreme Court against Nebraska seeking to enforce its Republican River entitlements under the Republican River Compact. Despite the Lundvall ruling, Nebraska joined Colorado to the original action. The three states agreed to settle the litigation on December 15, 2002 and the United States Supreme Court adopted the final stipulation in 2003. As part of the settlement stipulation the states agreed to use a commonly developed basin- wide groundwater model to quantify groundwater depletions to river flows so groundwater use could be reflected in Compact accounting. Once the groundwater depletions were considered in the accounting, Colorado's over all water use appeared to exceed its compact entitlements. The Republican River Water Conservation District proposed the compact compliance pipeline (CWCB loaned $60.6 million for the pipeline in the spring of 2008) to address that situation, 3. Pioneer/Laird Litigation As early as the 1970's North Fork surface water users believed that the designated NHP Basin wells were causing injury to their senior surface rights, z Kuiper v. Lundvall, 529 P.2d 1328 (Colo. 1974) 12368\1 \1204400.5 4