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Upper Gunni:;on River Water Conse?^vancy District <br />02CW038 <br />need, absent a showing that the claimed amount would cause injury to a vested senior water right. <br />City of Thornton v. Bijou Irr. Co., 926 P.2d l, 46-48 (Colo. 1996). <br />3. The leQislative scheme does not contemplate or autho.rize the role the CWCB seeks <br />for itself. <br />The C'JVCB's single-minded focus on the phrase "minimum stream flow ... for a reasonable <br />recreation experience" - without reference to the appropriator's intended purpose and the traditional <br />notions of rea:;onable and efficient use - attempts to impose an objective standard which goes against <br />the legislative scheme embodied in the 1969 Act. The CWCB now seeks to do exactly wha.t the <br />General Asseinbly determined it could not do: exercise adjudicatory authority over recreational in- <br />channel watei rights by determining the amount that should be appropriated. <br />Even (:W CB Director Kuharich himself did not believe a recreational in-channe:l diversion was <br />to be so constrained. He explained at the 5/7/2001 SB 2161egislative hearing: . <br />.. I think if you look at the defuution, it's an attempt to fit this water right into the <br />? process we have now. It talks about minimum amount of water necessary to <br />acconiplish a reasonable recreational experience. I think [unintelligible] . Reasonable <br />and recreational and are two wards that are used in there. <br />And I do thisilc that it's consistent with the test that other water users have to r,omply <br />with because any water user, be it agricultural, municipal or industrial, is govelned by <br />the test of efficiency where it's not all the water they can physically get a hold of, but <br />it's a.!l the water that they can reasonably and efficiently use. And thar, really <br />becor.ies the test of what those water rights can appropriate. And I think by this <br />defini tion, we have placed this water right in the same light that the other water right <br />classi f cations are. [Emphasis added]. <br />-12-