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plans to prepare for future droughts, the emerging role of water banks, and an examination of future trends in water management in the South Platte Basin. The 2004 South Platte Forum is scheduled for October 27 -28, 2004. Please plan to join us for this annual dia- logue on the South Platte. LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE ARKANSAS RIVER CASE KEYNOTE PRESENTATION South Platte Forum — October 23, 2003 by Dennis Montgomery Hill and Robbins It is a pleasure to be here. I am filling in for my partner, Da- vid Robbins, who was invited to speak today. David had to go to Minneapolis. His wife serves on the board of a founda- tion, and she requested his presence for the meeting. David came into my office a few weeks ago and, rather sheepishly, asked if I could fill in for him today. It was very hard for me to say no, because over the last 12 years, David and I have spent a total of 270 days of trial in California in Kansas vs. Colorado. That works out to 54 solid weeks of trial. Obvi- ously, we didn't do that all at one time, it was broken up into three -week segments over the last 12 years; but, when you are away from home that frequently, you build up some large debts to your family. The Special Master in Kansas vs. Colorado issued a draft fourth report in August. It is a 148 -page report and contains 13 recommendations on how to resolve the remaining issues in the case. Some of the recommendations are a great signifi- cance to well owners in the Arkansas River Valley, and they will be vitally interested in those recommendations, but they are not of general significance to water users in the rest of the state or the South Platte River Basin. So, I am going to con- centrate on a few recommendations that I think are of general interest, and one in particular that I think will be of interest to water users in the South Platte River Basin, and that is the Special Master's recommendation that the Penman - Monteith equation be used to determine potential evapotranspiration in the model that is being used to determine compact compliance in the Arkansas River Basin. But, before I get to the recom- mendations, I thought it would be helpful for those of you who are not familiar with Kansas v. Colorado to give you a brief history of the lawsuit. The case began in 1985, when Kansas filed a motion for leave to file a complaint against Colorado in the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court is the only court that has ju- risdiction of cases between states. The Supreme Court's rules require the filing of a motion for leave to file a complaint, because the Court likes to determine at an early stage whether the case is truly within its original jurisdiction and whether the case can be resolved at an early stage. In this case, the Court granted the Kansas motion for leave to file a complaint against Colorado. The complaint alleged three violations of the Arkansas River Compact between Colorado and Kansas. The first was that the operation of the Trinidad Project on the Pur- gatoire River, a tributary of the Arkansas River, had depleted usable flows of the Arkansas River in violation of the Arkansas River Compact of 1948. The second claim involved the Winter Water Storage Program, which is operated in part in Pueblo Reservoir, as part of the Fryingpan - Arkansas project. The complaint alleged that the operating principles for the Winter Water Storage Program had not been approved by the Arkansas River Compact Administration, which Kansas alleged was re- quired under a 1951 resolution of the Compact Administration and, further, that the operation of the program had depleted the usable flows of the Arkansas River in violation of the Compact. Finally, Kansas alleged that post- Compact well pumping by hundreds of wells that had been drilled in the Arkansas River Valley in Colorado in the years after the Compact had been adopted had depleted the usable Stateline flows that were avail- able to Kansas under the Arkansas River Compact. In 1986, the Court gave Colorado an opportunity to file an answer, and then appointed a Special Master to take evidence and prepare such reports as he deemed necessary. That is the usual practice in original actions before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Constitution originally envisioned that the U.S. Su- preme Court would sit as a trial court in cases between states, but today the Court's appellate jurisdiction is so pressing that it doesn't have time to act as a trial court. So, in original ac- tions the Court appoints a Special Master to take evidence and prepare reports. The Special Master functions very much like a federal district judge, with the exception that a Special Master probably has less discretion to exclude evidence than a federal judge. The Special Master prepares reports that are submitted to the Court. The parties are allowed to file exceptions, which are argued to the Court very much like any other appeal heard by the Court. The Court appointed Wade McCree as the first Special Master. 19