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CWCB Loan Narrative Overview 3 <br />PROJECT SPONSOR HCIC was incorporated on March 16, 1945 as the result of a merger between the Huerfano Valley Ditch and Reservoir Company and the Cucharas Irrigation Company. The storage right for the Cucharas Reservoir was granted as part of the “Atwood Decrees”, which were adjudicated in Huerfano County on October 6, 1921 with an appropriation date of March 14, 1906. The Cucharas Reservoir was adjudicated as part of a system (HCIC System) to deliver water to “40,000 acres susceptible to irrigation and proposed to be irrigated therefrom, 8,630 acres of which has been irrigated by means of said system” at the time of the decree. HCIC estimates based on observations from aerial maps and historic photos as much as 15,000 acres were previously irrigated on the HCIC System. On January 31, 1945, a supplemental decree was issued regarding the Cucharas Reservoir setting 31,958 acre feet as an absolute storage right and 34,404 acre feet as a conditional storage right. COAL MINING & PRODUCED WATER From the early 1900s to about 1950 a significant amount of stream flow in the Cucharas River was water pumped to the surface from coal mining operations in Huerfano County (Produced Water). Coal was taken from the Vermejo geologic formation and it was primarily used for furnaces in steel production in mills in Pueblo, Colorado. In its heyday, more than a million tons of coal and 15,000 acre feet of Produced Water were delivered annually from the mines west of Walsenburg. The Produced Water was relatively clean by standards of the day and dumped into the Cucharas River. At the time, the farmers on the HCIC System, some fifty miles away, likely did not even know the water they were putting on their fields was Produced Water coming from the coal mines west of Walsenburg. As the Produced Water ran down the Cucharas River it interacted with the rocks and soils of the river and took on the chemical and mineral attributes of the river. While the coal mines operated, the Produced water flowed, down to Cucharas Reservoir, down to the HCIC diversion point, onto the farms along the HCIC System in Pueblo. Those farms were among the most productive in Colorado. Conversely, when the coal mining stopped, so did the flow of Produced Water to the farms along the HCIC System. The direct flow water right owned by HCIC, 42 cfs with a February 2, 1888 priority, was unreliable and the farms, without the Produced Water, withered like their crops. Farmers along the HCIC System fell on hard times. Decades of struggle, hardship and deferred maintenance ensued and like the farms, the entire HCIC System, including the Cucharas Reservoir, deteriorated.