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HOLLA ND&HART,,. 'UlY 13, zoo' <br />aage a <br />soil on the banks of the river will slip away causing irreparable erosion.... <br />We believe that in this situation unrestrained self-help to a previously <br />untapped water supply would result in a barren wasteland. <br />529 P.2d at 1327. See also Ready Mixed Concrete Co., 115 P.3d at 644 ("[t]o permit such a <br />practice would encourage stripping the environment ... and reward developers"); R.J.A., Inc., <br />690 P.2d at 828 ("maximizing beneficial use and integrated use of surface and subsurface water <br />must be implemented with a sensitivity to the effect on other resources"). <br />Legislative Enactments <br />The holdings of Shelton Farms and Castle Meadows are now codified at C.R.S. § 37-92-103(9) <br />with respect to the use of salvaged water in augmentation plans: <br />"Plan for augmentation" does not include the salvage of tributary waters by <br />the eradication of phreatophytes, nor does it include the use of tributary <br />water collected from land surfaces that have been made impermeable, <br />thereby increasing the runoff but not adding to the existing supply of <br />tributary water. <br />As discussed above, the Court in Shelton Farms specifically noted that the legislature had <br />authority to prescribe new salvage water protocols. The legislature has already created at least <br />two such statutory exceptions to the salvaged water rule, which allow reservoirs and gravel pits <br />to take credit against their evaporative losses for vegetation that was eradicated by inundation of <br />the water surface. See C.R.S. §§ 37-84-117(4); 37-80-120(5); 37-92-305(12)(a); see also <br />Central Colorado Water Conservancy Dist. v. Simpson, 877 P.2d 335 (Colo. 1994) (upholding <br />gravel pit statute and stating that "the General assembly has authority to create programs by <br />which water that would otherwise be lost because of natural vegetative transpiration can be <br />developed in an orderly fashion for beneficial use"). <br />Other programmatic approaches to salvaged water and developed water have been proposed. For <br />example, a recent study examined the potential for "rainwater harvesting" in Douglas County. <br />See Leonard Rice Engineers, Inc., Meurer and Associates, Inc., and Ryley Carlock & <br />Applewhite, "Holistic Approach to Sustainable Water Management in Northwest Douglas <br />County" (January, 2007). This report concluded, among other things, that while current <br />Colorado law requires replacement (augmentation) of 100 percent of captured precipitation, it is <br />recognized that a portion of this precipitation is lost to native vegetation and sublimation (loss of <br />water through evaporation of snow) and never reaches the strEam system. See id., at pp14-16. <br />To the extent that the portion of precipitation that did not historically reach the stream system <br />could be quantified, the study suggests that this amount could be credited against augmentation <br />requirements with appropriate legislative action. See id. at p. 2.