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Mr. Travis Smith, Superintendent <br /> October 16, 2003 <br /> Page 9 <br /> the Tres Rios terms and conditions in 1986, 1987, and 1997. The Rio Grande had annual <br /> credits in 1997 and 1998 and so credit water would have been available for storage in these <br /> years. <br /> The amounts of the credit water that were available in these years (1948, 1949, 1958, <br /> 1970, 1973, 1984, 1997, and 1998) was estimated in essentially the same way as the water <br /> available under the Tres Rios terms and conditions, i.e., as the flow at Del Norte that exceeded <br /> the demands of the ditches. In this situation, however, the water was limited both to the outflow <br /> from Rio Grande Reservoir on a daily basis and to the Rio Grande's credit on an annual basis. <br /> Table 5 shows the monthly and annual storage volumes resulting from this analysis. <br /> Credit water was available for storage in 8 years in the period amounting to as much as 99,072 <br /> acre-feet in 1948. When spread over the 57-year period, it averaged 4,449 acre-feet annually. <br /> Of course, a reservoir enlargement of about 99,000 acre-feet would have been required to <br /> realize this full average. If the reservoir enlargement was less than about 99,000 acre-feet, <br /> some of the water could not have been captured and the average would have been smaller. <br /> DIRECT FLOW STORAGE <br /> We understand that an enlargement of Rio Grande Reservoir would provide additional <br /> reservoir capacity for"direct flow storage". The reservoir capacity could be used for this purpose <br /> not only by the District, but also by the Rio Grande Canal Water Users Association and the <br /> Commonwealth Irrigation Company. As discussed below, direct flow storage is recognized in <br /> decrees held by the District in Case No. W-3980, The Rio Grande Canal Water Users <br /> Association in Case No. W-3979, and by the Commonwealth Irrigation Company in Case No. <br /> 95CW18. The decree in Case No. W-3980 allows the District to store water available under its <br /> direct flow priorities 1903-17B, 1903-22E, 1903-24F, 1903-30F, and 1903-34G in Rio Grande, <br /> Santa Maria, and Continental Reservoirs when the flow at Del Norte, after curtailments are <br /> deducted, exceeds 2,285 cfs. The District has stored some direct flow water in the reservoirs <br /> under this decree since 1989. <br /> In this part of our investigation, we calculated the volumes of additional direct flow water <br /> that were historically available for storage in an enlargement. These were the volumes that were <br /> diverted into the Farmers Union Canal under the appropriate priorities. The calculations were <br /> made daily using Division of Water Resources records for the diversions of river water into the <br />