South Platte Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

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operate and irrigate an acre of land and get the optimum return. I think we have to have two acre -feet or in some cases, two and a half, due to the inefficiency of the actual application of the water. The other is that the remainder over and above the foot finds its way through the underground, sometimes in the open channels, back to the river. So the higher the first use is made, a certain portion of that is going to return to the river and be available for our reuse further on down. Also, as we go into details on that, if we allowed it to go into swamps and let the vegetation take it we wouldn't have it; if we applied the water on the lands and the return flow from those lands was of such a nature that made the quality of the water unsuitable, we'd be in trouble again there. But for the general terrain in the South Platte River, I think we'll have, for the senior rights below, not only with increased use above which goes even above the Riverside and the Empire, the increased use of the Henrylynn, for example, is actually a stabilizing factor upon our water supply, and I think that with an increase in a certain use above, the senior decrees in the area of Julesburg will not only get as much use but also a more stabilized flow. Something that they can work with without expensive structures to divert the water or prepare for the fluctuation in the flows that we now have on the river." MR. BARRETT: "Maybe I didn't understand what you told me originally or maybe you didn't understand my question. But you stated that the Empire Reser- voir, for instance, was 25/ efficient." MR. OSBORNE: "That's right." MR. BARRETT: "By that I understood you to say that of the water diverted from the river to fill Empire Reservoir, that 25/ of it was available in the reservoir to divert onto your project lands." MR. OSBORNE: "That's correct." MR. BARRETT: "well now, that's 75/ of loss between the -20-