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Dinosaur National Monument from the Little Snake River. The <br />Juniper-Cross Mountain water rights are located just upstream <br />from the confluence of the Little Snake and control perhaps 2/3 <br />of the flow through Dinosaur National Monument while the Little <br />Snake contributes the other 1/3. In contrast to the Yampa River <br />mainstem, there are no downstream, relatively senior conditional <br />water rights that control the legal availability of instream <br />flows on the Little Snake and there are just 3 sets of major <br />conditional water rights that encumber the Colorado side of the <br />Little Snake upstream. It may be much more feasible in this <br />drainage to file for a junior water right to protect the inflow <br />into the Yampa River and then to buy-out the upstream senior <br />conditional water rights. Keeping the upstream conditionals and <br />changing them to protect flows at the mouth of the Little Snake <br />may also be complicated by the interstate nature of this major <br />tributary. <br />One difficult question posed by just buying out these <br />upstream conditional water rights is appraising their fair market <br />value, when they may not be retained and converted to instream <br />use and when their development as dam projects may be <br />questionable. Clearly, the market value of such conditional <br />water rights is not equivalent to the market value of absolute <br />water rights or developed storage and should be discounted in <br />22