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-s- feet per second). One cfs is roughly equivalent to the output of thirty garden hoses discharging at once-not much of a river. The difficulty is that the CWCB has approached its task with the timidity of a nervous bureaucrat fearful of doing anything which might offend the conservative water establishment. Consequently, it has translated its legislative mandate "to preserve the natural environment to a reasonable degree",1' into a cautious effort to quantify the minimum amount of water necessary to sustain cold water fisheries. Although a cold water fishery often can survive with e fraction of a river's lowest flow, the CWCB typically has filed to protect that amount and nothing more. For fifteen years the CWCB has pursued its limited objectives without interference. While conservationists have complained from time to time that the CWCB is not doing enough, their objections have fallen on deaf ears in the state legislature. Instead of expanding or strengthening the instream flow program, the legislature has been content to reiterate that instream flows are the business of the CWCB and no one else.' Nine Cases for Instream Ri¢hts This narrow legislative outlook finally may be in for change. In the last few years conservationists have been joined by an unlikely collection of other parties to demand that the doors of the state's instream flow program be opened to the public. For example, the City of Fort Collins filed for an instream flow water right to protect flows in the Poudre River, after having spent millions improving a downtown park through which the river flows. The City of Boulder, which has just completed a costly riverside bike path and a fish observatory along Boulder Creek, is also exploring what can be done to ensure that the trout which people spot in the observatory are not dead ones. The nonprofit Greenway Foundation has filed an application for instream flows to protect its kayak route down the South Platte River in the middle of Denver. The City of Salida is concerned that without instream flow rights, upstream diverters may take away water necessary to dilute its treated sewage. The Upper Gunnison River Water Conservation District has filed for instream flow protection of the Taylor River in order to protect the recreation industry that has grown up along its banks. Ranchers along the Colorado River have filed for instream flow water rights to protect fisheries. Homeowners along Crystal Creek have sought to protect their land values by filing for instream flow water rights. The rafting industry is interested in purchasing agricultural water rights and legally converting taus water to instream flows in order to increase the number of days the Arkansas River will support whitewater boating. And the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratories filed for instream water rights to protect riparian study sites near Crested Butte. In short, there has been an explosion of interest in protecting instream flows for a variety beneficial urea unheard of until recently. And requests for inatream flow rights are being approved. Of the nine requests mentioned in the preceding paragraph, three have been granted, one denied, and the rest are pending. Despite a century of dorrunA~ce of the state legislature by water development interests, it appears that political recognition of the instream flow constituency is gradually occurring. 1'Colo. Rev. 3tat. ~ 37-92-103(4) (1974). `Senate Bill 212, 1987 Colo. Seas. Laws ch. 269 at 1306, codified at Colo. Rev. Stat. ~ 3?-92-102(3) (1988 Cumin. Supp.). Other government agencies may make recommendations, but only the CWCB may file and hold an inatream water right.