SB01-216 Senate Committee on Public Policy and Planning

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think these criteria are pretty well thought out. You know, the key phrase here is that you want to maximize the use of compact, decreed water. That's what all of the folks on the West Slope are going to be asking of us, when we go there for the next increment of trans - mountain water, is have you put your in -basin uses to the maximum use possible. And if we don't use that criteria as public policy but instead use the criteria that Golden is advocating, which is if it feels good, do it, there are going to be public policy implication. Mme. Chair: Thank you, Representative Paulson. I still have concerns about switching from the court to the Water Board, even though you're saying you want someone to set criteria, [unintelligible] it's legislature that needs to do that, [unintelligible] policy. Representative Paulson. C. Paulson: Madam Chairman, I think if you folks could do it and again have a sunset review or something and you had bulletproof criteria that took into account the flexibility that I'm talking about here, and you made the Water Court comply with it and in a timely manner. We can't have those criteria not go into effect for the next two or three years because then the horse is going to be out of the-barn. We got to have those criteria go into effect right away. .Mme. Chain OK. Thank you. Senator McElhany. Sen. McElhany: Thank you, Madam Chairman. Chris, I don't like to belabor a point, but I still don't understand this situation. These water rights would be so junior that I don't — I'm not seeing how they interfere with diversions or whatever else of senior water rights. I guess of those, what you're saying is that they don't interfere with diversions of senior rights but they may interfere with some other process. C. Paulson: Yes. Mme. Chair: Representative Paulson. C. Paulson: No problem, Madam Chairman, yes, and that's the key. Both of our Front Range basins, the Arkansas and the Platte are over appropriated. So there aren't going to be any junior appropriations that make any water. What the junior recreational flows will do will prevent people from adjudicating the right to move existing water rights to different locations because you have to adjudicate the right to move the existing senior appropriation to some new place. And when you do that, then that junior recreational flow becomes senior to the right to move the point of diversion. That's how you destroy the flexibility on that stream. April 12, 2001 Page 27