Recreational Instream Flow Workshop Tanscription of Meeting Tape

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Glenn Porzak I would have to look at the specific factual situation I think it would be real questionable. Greg Walcher There isn't any I just made it up Glen Porzak You got a couple of bites of the old apple on this one because not only do you have traditional water court domain but you also have to get a 404 permits for these. And a lot of times the Corps will look at these and ask certain questions so the state certainly has abilities to point out such things as impact on compact entitlement as whether a permit should be granted. Bill Brown — I think if you have a reach of the river that was really suitable for rafting but there was all of the sudden some serious rapids for instance that did.not allow rafts to pass or any other watercraft. You could probably go in there and construct some kind of a raft chute and accomplish it that way. But it would depend on the particular river. I don't see it would happen if it was amenable for rafting and you didn't have to do anything to it, then you could the right. Greg Walcher I just don't want to depend on some federal agency the Corps of Engineers or anyone else to care about whether Colorado is using its compact entitlement. Eric Wilkinson One more question then we have got to move on. Pafti Wells I had a quick question. Isn't the more fundamental question you are asking. Not just the fact that white water rafting is a form of recreation in Colorado and do we want to have instream flows available for that that purpose. And what Glen is saving is that the way our statute is set up know it would hard to do that without some kind of a diversion or control. That's kind of a policy decision and if `he idea is we want recreational instream flows of a much broader variety than simply rafting or simply kayak courses or things where you do have to build a diversion structure. That's a policy consideration that you know I am sure the board has interest in and would probably require some kind of legislation change. Eric Kuhn That's my point I didn't want to loose track of the issue being close for protection of recreation and I don't want to limit that to boat chute ah kayak courses. I wanted to have a broader policy level discussion then just the protection of kayak courses or small boat chutes or those kind of things. Glen Porzak But the fundamental difference is that in order to create the ability to have a water right for rafting you need a legislative chan ge. In order to strike down the ability to have a recreational diversion for kayak courses. You need to have a legislative change to prevent it because the law already allows it. Eric Wilkinson with that we are going to move on thanks Bill. Next we are going to here from Paul Flack of State Parks. Paul Flack I think I will walk to the front. For the record I want it noted that it was warm before I started. I was assigned this task of addressing the state interest for recreational instream flows coming off a week vacation. I can't tell you thrilling it is to ease back into the job. My first reaction was to go into government bag of speeches and pull out a win -win speech for the day. But just that term alone makes everybody gag including myself so I dumped that. Went to the other "in the interest of the taxpayer " government speech but again that really didn't fit for this particularly topic so ended up with this when you don't know what to do and really don't have a position at this point in time, we pull out the maybe maybe not speech. This is the maybe mabye not speech. Just a little background in relation to. I am the hydrologist at State Parks for some of those of you confused and think I am Laurie Matthews, that is not the case. I am a hydrologist. I am the one that basically administers and is responsible for instream flows VI