9351

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9351
• Author: Hobbs, G.
• Title: Water For Recreation, Water Quality, and Wetlands".
• USFW Year: 1990.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

channel from the point of release to a downstream delivery point.
Others not owning the stored water can be prohibited from
diminishing the quantity released as it travels downstream.
This does not mean, however, that one who releases
stored water into the natural stream for recreational purposes
may prevent, as a necessary element of such a water right, the
alteration of channel characteristics from a riparian stream
habitat to a flat water reservoir habitat. What is appropriated
under Colorado law is a quantity of water. A-B Cattle Co. v.
United States, 196 Colo. 539, 589 P.2d 57 (1978). The beds and
banks of the stream are owned by the adjoining land owner.
Peo le v. Emmert, 198 Colo. 137, 597 P.2d 1025 (1979). Junior
storage rights which may further utilize unappropriated waters of
the State cannot be opposed, under current law, by the holders of
senior water rights decreed for other uses, whether for
recreation or any other use. Aland use or regulatory program,
not now existing in state law, similar to the Federal Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act, 16 U.S.C. ~ 1278(a), would have to be enacted
if riparian recreational zones are to be preserved by operation
of State law.
In addition to water storage and release for
recreational purposes, Colorado law also provides authority for
the CWCB to appropriate instream flow water rights upon advice of
the State Parks Board. In the past, quantities of water
appropriated by the CWCB have been defined largely through the
use of a cross-sectional technique relating to fish propagation.
But the statute is not so limited. Conceivably the CWCB's
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