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

accordance with the prospects for developing dam projects under •
the conditional water rights. 21
VI. The Six Way (not including the Conservation Board) Agreement
for Instream Flows at Phantom Canyon.
The agreement which The Nature Conservancy has worked out to
provide instream flows at its Phantom Canyon Preserve does not
involve any instream water rights and the Colorado Water
Conservation Board is therefore not a party. But the agreement
is a remarkable example of how a conservation organization,
irrigators, municipalities, and industry can work together to
improve instream flows.
The Phantom Canyon Preserve, which was purchased by The
Nature Conservancy in 1987, includes 6 miles of spectacular
canyon on the North Fork of the Poudre River northwest of Fort
Collins. Just upstream from the preserve, the North Poudre
Irrigation Company operates Halligan Reservoir for irrigation
purposes, drawing it down in the summer and then refilling it
through the winter and spring, so that water is generally not
21 For a review of some basic appraisal principles that may
apply to this problem see: Bonnie Colby Saliba and David Bush,
Water Markets in Theory and Practice, 1987, pp. 205-207; and
Stanely Works v. Commissioner, 87 TC No. 22, Dec. 43, 274, August
12, 1986. The approach taken in the Cooperative Agreement
between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wyoming Water
Development Commission, February, 1990 should also be noted.
23