5 ‎(3)‎

• Board Meeting Date: 5/19/2009
• Description: IWMD Section - Water Supply Reserve Account ‎(WSRA)‎ Criteria and Guidelines
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

STATE OF COLORADO
Colorado Water Conservation Board
Department of Natural Resources
1313 Sherman Street, Room 721
Denver, Colorado 80203
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
www.cwcb.state.co.us
Bill Ritter, Jr.
TO: CWCB Members
Governor
Harris D. Sherman
FROM: Todd Doherty
DNR Executive Director
Jennifer L. Gimbel
DATE: July 10, 2009
CWCB Director
Dan McAuliffe
Agenda Item 5, July 21-22, 2009 Board Meeting –
SUBJECT:
CWCB Deputy Director
Amendments to WSRA Criteria and Guidelines
Recommendation
Staff recommends that the Board approve the amended version of the Water Supply Reserve
Account Criteria and Guidelines (attached).
Background
The WSRA criteria and guidelines subcommittee met on October 2008 to discuss changes to the
Criteria and Guidelines. Amendments were subsequently approved by the CWCB at their
November 2008 meeting and by the IBCC at th eir December 2008 meeting. At the IBCC
meeting, staff was asked to reconvene the subco mmittee to reconsider changes to the allocation
of funds between the Statew ide and Basin Accounts.
On June 22, 2009, the WSRA Subcommittee met and discussed the allocation of funds between
the accounts. The members decided to recommen d retaining the existing allocation structure
largely due to the amount of grant requests th at will be considered at the September CWCB
meeting. Current Statewide account requests are approximately $4.7 million with the possibility
th
of receiving more applications by the July 24 deadline. If the allocations were maintained,
approximately $2.8 million would be available in the Statewide account for the September
meeting. Considering this shortfall, the me mbers recommended that the current allocation
between the funds be maintained and to revisit this issue at their annual meeting in October.
In addition, the subcommittee members recommende d that statewide requests be considered in
May and September (currently March and September) sinc e the WSRA is a Severance Tax “Tier
II” program. Tier II programs receive their appropriated funds in three installments: 40% on
July 1, 30% on January 1 and the remaining 30% on April 1. Furthermore, one cannot assume
that each installment will be made (e.g. in fi scal year 2008-09, the April 1 installment was not
transferred to the WSRA account due to State bud getary shortfalls). Considering this funding
structure, the members recommended moving the stat ewide request in March to May to assist the
CWCB in making more informed funding decisions.
2 Attachments
Water Supply Protection • Watershed Protection & Flood Mitigatio n • Stream & Lake Protection • Water Supply Planning & Finance
Water Conservation & Drought Planning • In trastate Water Management & Development