Recreational Instream Flow Workshop Tanscription of Meeting Tape

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as it relates to the Parks. To date as background for this group State Parks does not hold nor has it ever sought a recreational instream flow. Instead Parks has developed strategic planning processes that works within the administrative systems of each river basin in the state. To be effective Parks has to understand the whole system and has to work with water right holders. In order to do that we have developed many many partnerships. Through much brain damage. And as a result come up with management and cooperative agreements with water stakeholders. I think one of the issues that State Parks is going to be interested in as it pertains to recreational flows is How do you file for one? That's where the maybe - maybe not scenarios come into play for today. First of all I think it's important under a recreational flow. What is your goal? Do you need to be specific or can you be broad? It's our opinion that you need to be specific. That falls into what Eric was saying earlier that based on the recreation that you are defining I think you get into a situation of identifying what beneficial use is, that gets us to the question of how much water do you need to appropriate? I think it's also important to point that when you file. Everybody has to realize what you don't get with a instream flow filing for recreation. You don't necessarily get an extended boating season. And to many of the white water folks that's important. Now clearly you can persevere or maintain status quo in terms of the peak flows and again that's important as well. But I think we need to be aware that you don't extend the life of the season with an instream recreational flow because of water availability. The other thing that you may or may not get with recreational flow is increased boating capacity. At some point there is so many boats you'can put on the river. And there's also other things that affect boating capacity than just flows. For example you can have high water flow on the Arkansas River. It could be raining cats and dogs, you are not going to have many rafters out. So I think there is some distinguishments that have to be made as to really what you are trying get with a recreational instream flow. A topic that has come to our attention is, Who should own an instream flow? Its been suggested that anyone can own an instream flow. Well maybe -maybe not. Under that kind of scenario recreational use or recreational benefit would be on the same setting and footing as a traditional water use and therefore anybody can apply for it. That's one thought the other thought is that's part of it that can be abused. And especially in terms of having ulterior motives and stopping exchanges. There have been a few extremely misguided individuals that have suggested State Parks hold the water right. Maybe but probably maybe not. The reason for that it is that the water resources program at State Parks now consists of three people me myself and I. CWCB staff would argue that two of those people aren't worth a damn. The problem is if you are going to have a government agency such as State Parks who really isn't per se supposed to be in the water business. Uh we don't have the staff to do it. And this would be a formidable task to lay on State Parks because we don't have the infrastructure now to do it. That leaves the obvious question should CWCB hold the water right. Maybe, maybe not. Certainly they have already go the infrastructure. They already have got it set up. Perhaps an expansion of the instream flow component of CWCB but it makes more sense from my perspective of course its easy for me say give them the work but, it seems to me they are a water agency State Parks they are obviously a better organization to do that. Then there's the thought lets have a new organization that just does recreational instream flows. Maybe -maybe not. Do we need another layer of government control? I don't know, there are some merits to it however when you can some type of committee put together that has balance to it with: certain types of recreational ists, piscatorial fishery needs, water users and other stake holders. I think there's some thought that should be given to some sort of oversee committee of some sort so that brings balance to the issue. The last thing in terms of the filing itself that kind of came up in some of the papers I read. Was what was the justification for a filing? What kind of engineering or data requirements would be associated with recreational instream flows? Well, that sort of the approach even though we don't make instream flow filings at State Parks is that we have to have the engineering and the data all put together in a package that we can present to stake holders so that we can accomplish in effect a recreational instream flow. We collect data on everything. How many boat, How many people in each boat, how many fishermen how many fish in each fisherman's creel and on and on it goes. That proves to be very effective in isolating the demand for that particular recreation. I think that would be a strong component in any recreational filing. It also would force the applicant to actually do 20