Recreational Instream Flow Workshop Tanscription of Meeting Tape

Home Browse Search

stem in the Colorado River. You are not going to put a boat chute in '/2 mile wide stream at Fruita. You might have a little kayak course that comes off of it and goes right back into it or something like that. But to put in a chute that controls stream flows up to 70,000 cfs in the high years and 1500 in the low, but there's a lot of rafting. You know, and should rafting, and I haven't heard that, but I want to hear that, Is should rafting on non, where you don't have a structure should that be controlled or managed or should that have a water right somewhere. So I am trying to separate the problem into distinct, you know, into ones that you could specifically address, with the specifics as opposed to trying to paint everything in too broad a brush. Glenn Porzak — And I want to again I want to emphasize the difference between large hydro -power diversions you know in a downstream area. Such as we face with the Shoshone power plant. And again emphasize what I indicated before, that the headwaters communities were faced with the situation where you have a flow that for 24 hours a day anywhere from 120 to 180 days a year takes all of the flow. And that's not the situation with any kayak course including the Golden course. Where you know it's it's a, it ratchets down over the season, in fact by month and in fact is not a 24 hour a day type of diversion. EW With that, thanks Glen, We will move on to our next speaker %%•hich is Bill Brown representing the City of Littleton. Bill Brown I grew up on the stormy plains of North Dakota and I learned at a early age to leery of people sitting at my back when I am talking about a controversial subject. So if you don't mind I will stand over here. EW Just stand up here, you just can't stand in the comer, you can't have full advantages. Bill Brown I will just come over here. First of all I want to commend the commission for having these hearings. I think this is an important issue in Colorado. Its an issue that if Glen Sanders were alive today and walk in this room he would wonder what in the world are you doing talking about something like recreational instream flows. But Colorado is changing. I was asked I guess to speak briefly about the Littleton situation. Interestingly enough I think most of the members of the board are familiar with this as I am, because I have been before you a whole lot. Some of the audience may not be, the city of Littleton back in 1974, created a park, about a 600 acre park called the South Platte Park. And the South Platte River flows through it, The River is just below Chatlfield Reservoir and when Chatfield came along, Littleton and others wrestled with the fact that they didn't want to see the South Platte River channelized as it went through that park they wanted to see if they could find a way to preserve and enhance not only the natural environment of the river but also of the surrounding floodplain. And they worked pretty hard for many, many years getting this done. And they worked with the CA'CB, The Army Corps of Engineers, they worked with the South Suburban Park and Recreation District and even the Urban Drainage District in trying to get this done. In the early 1990's an application was filed in water division I by Kiowa Resources and that application in its simplest terms would have allowed for an exchange with the upper reach of that exchange being Chatfield reservoir. And the idea would be that water would be taken at Chatfield Reservoir and the exchange reach would have extended through the park. Meaning that park could have been totally dried up, uh the river flow through there. That really caught Littleton's attention obviously. The Kiowa Resources application went away but the problem certainly didn't. So Littleton began to work with the CWCB to try and see if it would be possible to get an instream flow right through that reach the 2 mile reach of the river through the park. And without going into great detail even though Jay Skinner looked at flows and we did some other things that application never was filed. Littleton then thought that it had to do something in order to avoid a situation where somebody else might come along with a similar exchange proposal as Kio%k•a had resulting in all there work and effort to keep flows in the river being lost. And so it did file an application. Its approach frankly was to look at 16l