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minimum ainount - unlike pre-SB 216 water rights - precisely because RICDs were a change <br />from "traditional water law principles," .and such limitations were necessary to ensure <br />reasonableness. <br />If, as the Water Court held, RICDs were only limited by the Applicant's desire and there <br />were no limitations on the RICD "size and scope," then improper motives could determine where <br />Colorado's most valuable and scarce resource would be apportioned. Here, the stated intent of <br />the Applicant was to "protect Upper Gunnison water resources from out-of-basin diversion. ..." <br />(v. IV, pp. 136). In future cases, other improper motives (such as controlling a valuable <br />resource for monetary gain) might not be revealed. Such subjective motives demonstrate the <br />perils of relying on subjectivity instead of more objective determinations made by an agency <br />composed of inembers from every major river basin. <br />Therefore, this Court should reverse the Water Court's ruling and give proper meaning to <br />the term "minimum stream flow." <br />A. The Plain Language of SB 216 Limits RICDs to the <br />"minimum stream flow" for a reasonable recreation <br />experience. <br />This Court should give effect to the intent of the legislature by giving words and <br />phrases their commonly accepted meaning. PDM Molding, Inc. v. Stanber?, 898 P.2d 542, 545 <br />(Colo. 1995). The plain language of SB 216, if given effect, shows additional limitations on <br />recreational instream uses that do not exist for diversionary water rights. The word "minimum" <br />is defined by Black's Law Dictionary 1268 (Sth ed. 1979) as the "least quantity assignable, <br />admissible or possible in [a] given case and is opposed to maximum." This is also a common- <br />sense interpretation. <br />12