9356

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9356
• Author: Wigington, R.
• Title: Water Right Marketing Strategies to Protect Instream Flows in Colorado.
• USFW Year: 1990.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

Boulder's program to maintain 15 cfs of minimum flow in Boulder •
Creek, and the lease of 10,000 acre feet of Ruedi storage water
to improve the instream habitat of endangered fish near Grand
Junction. 12 The Black Canyon agreement may also be interesting
because it concerns the conversion to instream use of a
conditional water right, one of those property rights to develop
water in the future.
The Pittsburg and Midway Coal Mining Company had been
granted conditional water rights to construct a 162,700 acre foot
reservoir on the Gunnison River which would flood out most of the
river from its confluence with the North Fork up to the boundary
of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument, and to
divert 800 cfs out of the river near the North Fork confluence,
all under a 1965 priority date.13 The Conservancy persuaded the
Company to donate 300 cfs out of the direct flow water right and
to grant a kind of easement against the storage water right that
would preclude the construction of a dam under that water right
12 A nearly final draft of the Ruedi Reservoir agreement
and of several related documents are discussed by Bill McDonald
in his November 7, 1989 memorandum to the Colorado Water
Conservation Board. This agreement has been now approved and
executed.
13 Decree in CA No. C-5873, District Court for Delta
County, August 11, 1969.
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