House Committee on Agriculture, Livestock, & Natural Resources

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There are a couple of things that the bill does that we felt was necessary to provide for this equity. First, it does not allow the conversion of conditional water uses, conditional water rights for conversion to the boat chutes. Currently there are thousands of water rights on the books that are conditional that have little or no chance of being developed. By allowing an entity to accept a conditional water right with a priority date significantly senior to the date of the appropriation or the date of the creation of the boat chute would have the potential of injuring existing water users. By example, if the local government accepting a conditional water right, say one of the oil shale rights on the Colorado that are in the 1950s - since the 1950s, several significant communities have developed, and to give the water right a priority date of this early nature would adversely impact the communities that had filed on water rights and developed water after that time. And I'd point specifically to the town of Vail whichwasn't even a glimmer in anybody's eye in the 1950s when these conditional rights were granted. Additionally, by allowing for a donation of conditional water rights like this, you have the added incentive of a tax exemption or a tax deduction the owner of this water right could give or in many cases the ability of the water right to develop would be very slim. Additionally, the bill prohibits the conversion of an in- channel recreational diversion to use. for domestic purposes. It • would be a non - consumptive flow - through water right in its very nature, and to allow this to all of a sudden become a consumptive water right would really cause a lot of problems-in terms of administration on the river. The Water Conservation Board would develop rules. The party, after filing, would present their application to us and we'd present a report to the water court. I do think that this is not an attempt to • create a second -class water right as many rights, including the in- stream rights that we currently own and administer which have various conditions placed on them. I would say placing conditions on water rights is certainly something that the Constitution contemplated when it looked at the ability of domestic water rights having power to [unintelligible] municipal and agricultural. To my knowledge, only one attempt has been made on that, but clearly the Constitution looked at domestic water rights as having a higher value than, say, an industrial water right. So I think this fits in the framework of what the Constitution discusses. May 7, 2001 Page 5