7777

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7777
• Author: Ward, R. C.
• Title: Proceedings 1993 Colorado Water Convention, Front Range Water Alternatives and Transfer of Water from One Area of the State to Another, January 4-5, 1993, Denver, Colorado.
• USFW Year: 1993.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

farmers within the basin so that no one farmer has to put up with that
burden for an extended period of time.

In addition, there can be municipal first-use agreements. The
proposal has been forwarded recently by the Barr lake ditch companies
that their facilities be somehow incorporated into the South Platte
municipal water supply system as an example of a municipal first-use
system. That is a third category of municipal-agricultural use that
we feel has an enormous potential to benefit both the agricultural
sector and the municipal sector.

Water use efficiency -- we have talked about this before.
Municipal water conservation is certainly something every individual
community is looking at. It has an additional value if you consider
it from an integrated system concept: if through cooperation and
integration of water supply systems individual communities could have
an opportunity to sell any excess water that they may have through
conservation or, conversely, buy any additional water supplies they
need that may be gained through municipal conservation. That would
provide more of a market which may provide additional incentive for
communities to look at water conservation.

Agricultural conservation -- certainly another area -- when you
have more than two million acre-feet a year being diverted, small
savings in the amount diverted and the amount consumed in certain
circumstances can result in significant savings to municipalities.

The fourth category is what I call the actual integration of
existing systems. It can take place in several ways. You can link
existing water supply systems and thereby gain certain benefits. The
proposed gravity pipeline from Carter Lake to the northern Denver
Metro area is an example of such a linkage. What can it do? It can
provide a way of moving available water that may be for sale in one
area into another area of the Front Range; It can provide an
alternate path of diversion for a portion of Denver's West Slope water
rights. Through the Windy Gap portion of Denver's Moffat and Frasier
Valley water rights could, with minor facility modifications, be
diverted down at the Windy Gap diversion facility and then back into
the northern metro area via the Carter Lake pipeline. That could have
the benefit of allowing better management of water on the Frasier
basin, increased yields to the East Slope, better instream flow
protection to the West Slope, and increased energy production through
the Colorado-Big Thompson hydropower facilities.

Coordination of existing systems -- Coordinated operation of
reservoir systems is another example of integrating existing systems;
for example, Aurora's Spiney Mountain Reservoir currently planned to
store water diverted under Aurora's Homestake projects, those existing
and those proposed, and in addition storage space to occasionally
capture South Platte flood flows. The full yield of the Spiney
Mountain project could be realized at an earlier point by changing a
portion of Denver's Two Forks rights so that they can be stored in
Spiney Mountain. That would increase the yield of this project not
over and above what it would eventually get when Homestake is fully
built out, but would provide for an earlier attainment of that portion
of the yield without significant facilities construction.

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