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any state agency "to deprive the people of the state of Colorado of the beneficial use of those <br />waters available by law and interstate compact." Id. <br />Upon a challenge to the statute's constitutionality, the Court upheld the law, finding that <br />the General Assembly intended to depart from the well- established requirement of a physical <br />diversion when it enacted Senate Bill 97 declaring the Colorado Water Conservation Board as <br />the sole entity able to appropriate minimum flows without a diversion between two designated <br />points in the river. Colo. River Water Conservation Dist., 197 Colo. at 476, 594 P.2d at 574. <br />The General Assembly did so by expanding the definition of "beneficial use" to include the <br />"appropriation by the state of Colorado in the manner prescribed by law of such minimum fl ows <br />between specific points or levels for and on natural streams and lakes as are required to preserve <br />the natural environment to a reasonable degree." § 37- 92- 103(4), 10 C.R.S. (2003) (emphasis <br />added). The Court subsequently recognized the validity of these limits: <br />[S]ection 37 -92- 102(3), while creating a right to appropriate such <br />waters, burdens the actions of the Board by creating a unique <br />statutory fiduciary duty between the Board and the people of this <br />state so that the Board may only appropriate a particular amount of <br />water, i.e., the minimum amount necessary to preserve the natural <br />environment; second, and equally controlling here, the Board's <br />decreed water rights ... are designated as the "minimum stream <br />flow as required to preserve the natural environment to a <br />reasonable degree. <br />Aspen Wilderness Workshop, Inc. v. Colo. Water Conservation Bd., 901 P.2d 1251, 1256 -57 <br />(Colo. 1995). The limitations imposed by the in- stream flow statute were not found to violate <br />the constitutional right to divert water for beneficial use. Cf. City & County of Denver v. <br />Northern Colo, Water Conservancy Dist., 276 P.2d 992, 1001 (Colo.. 1954) (recognizing that the <br />doctrine of relation back in conditional water rights is a "legal fiction in derogation of the <br />Constitution," subject to regulation by the General Assembly. "). <br />20 <br />