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Mme. Chair: Yes, the staff will hand them out for you. <br /> D. Hanna= Thank you. My name is Dan Hartman. I'm here representing the City <br /> of Golden. I guess I'd like to talk, to start with, how important this <br /> type of water right can be to a small local community. In Golden's <br /> case, our water, whitewater course, our whitewater park has been very <br /> key to the economic redevelopment of our downtown. And if you're <br /> familiar with Golden, we've been doing an awful lot of work over the <br /> last ten years to try to improve and maintain a small town downtown, <br /> which I'm sure a lot of you understand is extremely difficult in the <br /> middle of a metropolitan region. We, I guess, are fairly proud we've <br /> been successful at that. But one of the key elements of that <br /> redevelopment effort has been recreation and recreational <br /> opportunities within the town. And our whitewater park is certainly a <br /> very big key element to this. To that end, we have made a very <br /> substantial investment into our whitewater park. And I might direct <br /> your attention to the third, fourth and fifth — third, fourth and fifth — <br /> no, fourth, fifth and sixth pictures in the packet. You can see in here <br /> some of the construction activities going on when we were building <br /> our whitewater park. This is not a matter of scattering a few boulders <br /> in the stream. This is a grouted, keyed -in dam. This thing goes six to <br /> eight feet into the riverbed. It goes into the banks on the sides and is a <br /> very substantial structure. To that end, the City of Golden has spent <br /> hundreds of thousands of dollars developing this park. <br /> On the other hand, we believe it's been very successful as a <br /> recreational amenity for the residents of Golden and residents and <br /> visitors to the State of Colorado. We had in the neighborhood of <br /> thirteen thousand users in that course per year. And that is a very <br /> significant spin -off economic activity estimated by a report we had <br /> done at over $2 million a year to the City of Golden. Additionally, <br /> because — and I know there were people who will say our particular <br /> request was very large, because in the high flow months, we are <br /> looking for a thousand cfs. That type of flow for our course is very <br /> necessary. We have been extremely successful in holding world class <br /> events. We had a number of first -class whitewater toumaments, <br /> including the US Olympic team training there last June prior to going <br /> to Sydney. We, I guess, enjoy being recognized as one of the ten best <br /> whitewater parks in the country. We won't have that opportunity if we <br /> don't have the flows that the course is designed to deliver. <br /> This, I guess, from our point of view, is additionally a fairly good <br /> water right. It is certainly completely non - consumptive. And the <br /> water gets to be re -used immediately after we're done with it. In dry <br /> years, 100 percent of the water that we have claimed is completely re-. <br /> used immediately after and in an average year, 85 percent of it is used <br /> April 12, 2001 <br /> Page 10 <br />