Summary of Select Water Storage and Flow Condudition (3)

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I t STATE OF COLORADO Colorado Water Conservation Board Department of Natural Resources 1313 Sherman Street, Room 721 Denver, Colorado 80203 Nhone:(303)866-3441 Fax: (303) 866-4474 www.cwcb.state.co.us MEMORANDUM Bill Ritter, Jr. Governor TO: Reservoir Coordinating Committee ("RCC") and Environmental Account Committee "EAC" Members ? ? Hartis D. Sherman DNR Executive Director FROM: Ted Kowalski, Program Manager Jennifer L. Gimbel CWCB Director DATE: November 10, 2008 Dan McAuliffe CWCB Deputy Director SUBJECT: Summary of Select Water Storage Information and Flow Condition for the South Platte River Basin 1. 1NTRODUCTION Since the last RCC/EAC meeting, the three States and the U.S. Department of the Interior have continued implementing the Platte River Endangered Species Recovery Implementation Program Agreement ("the Program"), which began on January 1, 2007. As most of you know, the President signed the authorizing legislation in May 2008 and the stakeholders have continued implementing the Program in Please see the following information in support of the RCC and EAC meetings for the Program. In preparing the information I continued to focus my efforts on the South Platte River and selected data, which I believe is the most releva.nt for the RCC. As always, I have also included a number of Internet Sites, which people can access for additional information and up-to-date infortnation over the next several months. As I indicated in my last report, Colorado must provide its first accounting report by March 31, 2009, and therefore the next report may look substantially different than this report, depending in part on how the EA manager would like to work with Colorado in order to have this annual report restructured. II. WATER SUPPLY OUTLOOK Stream Flow I have attached several graphs of historic and current (October 2008) flow information for the South Platte River at Kersey and Julesburg. Of note, on the first table, the streamflows at Kersey are lower than this time last year, but just slightly above average. The flows at Julesburg are much lower than this time last year and the average due in part to the very little precipitation that Colorado received in the late summer and fall. (See pages 3-8). It is too early in the season to know what type of precipitation year we expect to see in 2009, but it is important to understand that most of our South Platte reservoirs are about the same, or in a better position, than over the last several years. Water Supply Protection • Watershed Protection & Fiood Mitigation • Stream & Lake Protection • Water Supply Planning & Finance Water Conservation & Drought Planning • Intrastate Wster Management & Development